


Or Sink

by attemptnumbereleven



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Swimming, M/M, Mental Health Issues, References to Depression, References to Illness, Slow Build, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 68,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26499808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attemptnumbereleven/pseuds/attemptnumbereleven
Summary: "Alright," Martín says, still looking as if he wants to say something else, then deciding against it. "Because it could have been bad.""Well, yeah, you were unconscious after all, Martín.""No, I mean," he interrupts, suddenly embarrassed and searching for his next words. "it could have been bad, really bad, because I can't swim. I never learned."When Andrés next smiles, it's feral. The next words fall out so fast that he barely registers them."We can't have that, can we? There's water everywhere. You're in a perpetual state of danger! There's only one thing for it. I'll have to teach you."AU where Andrés is an ex-olympic swimmer who teaches Martín how to swim. The swimming AU no one asked for.
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 406
Kudos: 267





	1. Chapter 1

When he wakes up, his skin is clammy from sweat and his breath feels as if it had been sharply stolen from his lungs. When he eventually wills his breath to regulate, he swings his legs around the bed and pulls himself to standing. In moments like this, he's thankful for the vista on the other side of the window that he's still convinced cost him an extra few thousand euros alone when he bought the house four years ago. The sea is still there, thank god, and the moonlight glinting off each wave is almost too bright for his sleep-deprived eyes to comprehend. 

His dreams yet again filled with _that day._ He knows he won't get to sleep again tonight, so turns the bedside light on and pulls out whatever book he's been pretending to read for the last week. Reading normally involves taking in the words on the pages, digesting them, understanding them, letting them create and paint images in the mind. Reading for him now means looking at the words one by one, making no connections between them, shutting the book and then calling it completed. Even reading for him is tainted. Another thing to begrudge to _that day._

His eyes reopen a number of hours later, telling him two facts. One: he fell asleep! Two: it's morning, which means he'll soon be expecting a visitor. He almost wants to be asleep again at the thought of that. Almost. He marks himself impressed at himself as he pushes himself out of bed and showers, and particularly impressed at himself as he stomachs breakfast, even if it does involve a tiny shot of whiskey.

The knock at the door at ten o'clock sharp is predictable, but then again, so is the man on the other side of the door. 

"Sergio," Andrés says, stepping back to let his brother inside without even looking him in the eye. "To what do I owe this pleasure?" 

"Andrés, I told you I was coming." His brother says, taking off his coat, folding it neatly (Andrés knows he only does this to busy his hands when he feels nervous) and sitting down in Andrés's least favourite chair. 

"And yet, I'm still surprised that you are here. How was Paula's trip?" Andrés says, actually interested. His niece (of sorts) is actually tolerable, to his surprise, and he has yet to see her since her educational excursion to some sort of aerospace institute. He thinks bitterly that he might have liked school a bit better if they had taken him to such places. 

"She's back tonight," Sergio nods, seeming unsure where to place his hands. "the house has been rather quiet without her." 

"Good. I look forward to whatever tacky branded stationery item she has bought for me this time."

"I'm still slightly insulted by the hairbrush she bought me from the war memorial." Sergio concedes, and the tension eases ever so slightly. He allows himself to laugh. 

"Right. Let's hear it." Andrés says, because there is only so much small talk he can withstand, after all. 

"You need to get back in the pool."

"No." 

Well. That was easy. Andrés leans back in his chair, hoping that Sergio will take his leave after such a clear and unwavering answer. He does not. Fucker.

"Andrés-"

"Little brother, please. I won't spell it out for you again. I am still carrying...emotional and psychological remnants of the incident." 

"Just say Olympics, Andrés. You won't combust." Sergio says, almost bored.

Andrés takes in a sharp breath through his nose out of habit. 

"It's been five years, Andrés. It was...unfortunate, but you're recovered now, the treatment has been-"

"The treatment has been working, yes. But I'm not healed, Sergio. The doctors of today are good, but they aren't magicians. They can't just make an entire hereditary degenerative disease disappear." Andrés says, his hands finding their way to his temples. It's too early for this kind of headache, he decides. 

"Your doctors agreed that some physical therapy in the form of swimming would actually be rather beneficial-"

"Oh did they? How grand! Thank you for the message, Sergio! I'll just send you along to my next appointment so they can examine you instead. Let you get poked and prodded." He stands, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt roughly. It's suddenly much warmer in his living room, despite the air conditioning being in perfect working order, the windows being open, and a fan being pointed directly at their armchairs. His body is betraying him again. 

"Andrés, please. Even if just for me? I hate to see you like this. I'll even swim with you if you want, even though I was never that good at that side of things." 

He's trying, and if Andrés wasn't quite so furious right now, he'd probably appreciate the concern. His brother loves him, with a love that he often can't quite understand or knows how to receive. He's been the one constant through the last five years of living in his own personal slice of hell, visiting him every tuesday before he goes to meetings, events, and matches and all of the stuff that Andrés pretends he doesn't miss. 

"I'm going to guess that you've already made arrangements for me to swim by the way you've approached this conversation." 

"Well, yes, but it's not confirmed, it's just that I've hired a pool for you, exclusively, today." 

"Which one?" 

"Agata's." 

Andrés hums, nodding automatically as he paces in front of his fireplace, his fingers delicately caressing the ceramic pieces on top. They're dustier than he imagined them to be. He makes a mental note to dust them properly, or to pretend to do so and to hire a cleaner instead.

"And what does Miss Nairobi think about your little plot?" 

"She says you need rediscover the water on your own before she gets involved again. But the pool is yours if you want it."

"I won't swim during the day." 

"Good thing I've requested the pool cleaning to happen after midnight. If you want to stay for ten minutes or for two hours, it's open for you." As if to demonstrate the point, Sergio slides a set of keys across the coffee table. If his mind wasn't so taken up with apprehension, he would scold Sergio for threatening the integrity of his vintage mahogany furniture. 

"Thank you, Sergio," It's quiet, even to his own ears, but the small smile Sergio gives him in return indicates his understanding, "but I'll make no promises."

"I wouldn't expect you to," Sergio nods, standing. He grasps Andrés shoulder tightly in an oddly intimate gesture for him, before opening the door again. "Now, I've got to meet with Tokyo. She's being difficult with a sponsorship contract."

"What else is new? Is the sky blue?" Andrés laughs before he hears the door close with a soft click.

He can't take his eyes off the keys. The way they shine. 

They feel particularly heavy in his hand as he approaches the centre that night, weighing him down, reminding him that it's real. He is almost surprised when they unlock the front door and he steps inside, smelling the familiarity of chemicals. He tightens the hold on his bag and changes into his gear without trying to think about it too much. Oddly, it's the goggles out of everything that causes his hands to tremor slightly, but when he looks down at his hands, they're still. He takes a breath, and tries to weigh up the importance of even wearing goggles at all. Maybe it's a myth to sell more equipment. He doesn't need to see underwater if he doesn't even make it to the pool itself tonight. He's surprised he's even made it this far.

He's leaning towards his bag to return the goggles when he hears it. 

A splash. 

Not a drop, not a drip, but a splash. 

Someone's here. 

Curse Agata, she's so gossipy, of course she's told someone he was coming tonight. He curses her under his breath as he pulls out his metal water bottle, just in case his pool companion is less than safe. Just his luck to muster up the courage to return to the pool after all this time, after all this stress, after all of the recovery, after all of the therapy, to be murdered by someone Agata blabbed to at quarter to eleven on a Tuesday.

He wills his breath to slow, and once it does he pokes his head out round the corner of the changing rooms to see a man. He remembers the janitors' uniform well, with how often he used to frequent the pool, but he's surprised to see the trouser legs of this janitor rolled up to about halfway up his calf, while the janitor himself, stood on the edge of the pool, draws careful patterns with his toes in the water. 

He loosens his hold on the water bottle and allows himself to watch what seems oddly beautiful for a moment. The green of the emergency exit light illuminating this man's face and the lights from within the pool glowing around him. He's lit up completely, while the gentle sound of the water ever so slightly catching itself as he draws bigger curves with his feet sounds out in the empty pool. 

He doesn't want to stop watching, but his voice betrays him. He's curious, he wants to join him. To feel that serenity. To capture it, put it in a bottle, to hold it, to drink it, to breathe it. 

"Hello?"

The man, who he'll soon learn is named Martín, promptly falls into the water. 


	2. Chapter 2

For a moment, Andrés watches the man in the water, hears the violent echoes of splashes as each limb meets and is enveloped by the water. Still royally surprised by the man's fall altogether (because, _of course_ on the first day he returns to a pool in years, he manages to frighten a stranger so much that he falls in), Andrés finds himself motionless.

Motionless, too, is the man in the water, Andrés quickly realises.

_Oh, fuck._

Without thinking, Andrés dives in. 

People often speak about the memory that water has, and Andrés is certainly familiar with it. In the height of his training, he would refuse to begin to swim in water that had been swum in within the hour, being able to feel the choppy currents around him. He would also, after tapping the edge in triumph after a particularly good lap, look back at the shapes he'd made in his lane before looking towards Agata, almost certain that he could determine the success of his swim, and thus predict her feedback, just by looking at what he'd done to the water. 

Water has memory, but so does the body when it's in water. 

His legs seem to know what to without any semblance of thought. The dive crosses a decent portion of the distance between the entrance of the pool, where Andrés had been standing and to the area the man had fallen in, but he finishes off the gap by scissoring his legs, kicking them out silently under the water, causing him to glide through quickly. It takes more effort for his body than he remembers, but hey, he's rusty. 

When he reaches the man, he plants his feet on the pool's floor and grabs the man's head, pulling it out of the water and into the air. 

The man's eyes are closed, and he's not breathing, Andrés's fingers tell him, hovering over the man's lips. And, to top it all off, there's a lovely little stream of blood stemming from the man's temple. 

_Oh, fuck. The sequel._

Grabbing the man by his shoulders firmly (his saturated janitor's uniform slipping out of his grasp) he kicks his legs out with double the effort to swim them both to the nearest edge, which, thankfully, is only a matter of kicks away. He rests the man's neck on the edge to keep his face out of the water while he pulls himself out of the pool. 

Violently, he realises that he just swam for the first time in five years.

This tremendously monumentous fact is only slightly overshadowed by the man who is pretty much dead in his arms. 

It takes a reasonable amount of force to pull the man out of the pool and onto the floor. It ends up being a sort of rolling-pulling-yanking-cursing hybrid, but he manages to get the man on his back before he quickly gets to work at bringing the man in front of him back to life. 

He wonders how he'll explain this to Sergio. 'Yeah I did decide against my post-traumatic stress and to take a trip to the pool, only to kill a man. But at least I got into the water!' 

He pumps the man's chest with his palms, counting under his breath. He's suddenly rather thankful for the quarterly CPR sessions Sergio used to arrange for him, as he opens the man's mouth by his chin and blows. He pulls back, as if waiting for something miraculous to happen, like it does in the movies. 

It does not. 

Panic is a funny, curious thing. It is all consuming, affects every part of you, to the very edge of your fingertips, rendering them sometimes completely numb. It makes it way inside of you, filling all of your organs and polluting your blood. But the thing with panic is, is that at a certain level, a level of panic which seems impossible to achieve, at that level, you feel nothing at all. 

Fight or flight, indeed. 

Andrés decides not to dwell on how this is the most alive he's felt in...a long time. 

He completes another round of CPR, then another, pumping and blowing, and a bit of shaking the man by the shoulders (which he somehow does not remember being in the courses Sergio sent him on) in the hopes that he takes a breath. If he wanted to phone an ambulance, he'd need to go back to the changing rooms, and he couldn't afford to lose that time during the CPR. He keeps pumping the man's chest - one, two, three, four, five - and when he next blows air into the man's chest, he reaches towards the man's trousers, finding a phone in the front pocket. At least something is going his way. He leans back as he pulls the phone out, and begins to dial as he hears it. 

A cough. Or maybe it's more of a choke. Either way, it's perhaps the most beautiful sound Andrés has ever heard. Which certainly is an exaggeration, but you know, in a moment where he'd thought he'd killed the man, it probably is. 

He casts the phone in his hand aside to pull the man's chest up to aid him coughing some more of the water out. He softly pats his back, and keeps it there even as the man tries to slow his breathing, his head hung. 

They stay there for a minute, both of them heavily breathing. Andrés can see the glow of the pool's lights illuminating his face again, with the shadows of the water, stabilising itself too after all the splashing only moments ago, dancing across his cheek. It's the first time that he properly looks at the man, and the first time that the man looks back at him, his eyes bright. 

"What," the man says, his voice hoarse from choking up the water, pausing between words to cough again, "and I mean this in the nicest way, _the fuck_ , was that?" 

Andrés decides he likes him instantly, but frowns anyway at the accusation. 

"I am so sorry -" he starts, but the man, who spent the last few minutes totally and completely (deadly) silent, suddenly feels very talkative, swearing at him in Spanish with a very thick Argentinian accent. Great. 

"I nearly _died!_ I saw my life flash before my eyes, and let me tell you, it was a very boring movie. I saw the gates of heaven, which is good, I suppose as I really thought that the way I treated Mariah in high school would have gotten me sent to hell, but what the fuck, man! What the fuck are you doing here? It's like midnight!" The man, still nameless, slaps Andrés's chest as he says 'fuck', just to emphasise it even more. 

Yeah, he definitely likes this guy.

"My brother knows Agata. He got me the keys so I could swim at night, but-"

"Whatever, I don't care. Let me just...go." He shakes himself free of the hold Andrés didn't realise he was still holding and begins to push himself to standing, before letting out a soft 'woah' and plopping himself back to sitting. 

Andrés suddenly remembers the cut to the man's head. 

_Oh fuckity-fuck. The remix._

"You've got nasty cut on your forehead, it might be concussion." 

The man reaches up to his forehead and somehow is still surprised to see blood on his own fingertips. 

"Oh." He says. 

Andrés stands and guides the man up with him, holding onto his shoulder and elbow. 

"Come on, I'd better take you to the hospital. It'll probably need stitches."

The man lets out a low groan at that, but still lets himself be led out, and even allows Andrés to wrap a towel around him. 

The drive to the hospital is quiet, and involves Andrés checking the man is still alive every ten seconds, much to the chagrin of said man. 

"Fuck off, I'm still here, you piece of shit," the man says, texting on his phone. "I'll let you know if I die during the journey at any point." 

"It's probably not good for the concussion be on your phone." 

"Fuck. Off." 

"Do you want me to wait with you when we get there? I can drive you home." Andrés says, feeling awfully generous considering he did nearly kill the man. 

"God no. I never want to see you again. My boyfriend will pick me up. That's who I'm texting, you see. He'd never scare me into falling into a watery death." 

"How do you know that?" 

"How do I know what?"

"That he wouldn't try to kill you by scaring you so much you fall into a pool?" 

"Well, I just do."

"People always surprise you. He may well be a murderer. All the best ones are the ones you don't expect. And statistically, it's likely that someone you currently know is or will be a murderer." 

"Shut up. What are you even talking about? How much true crime have you been watching?"

"I just mean that anyone could be a murderer, even me." 

"You nearly were a murderer, just now, remember?" 

"I don't think I'll forget soon." 

"But you did save me, so maybe not a murderer?"

"Maybe not."

Andrés is painfully aware that this is the first decent conversation he's had with someone other than his brother or Raquel in (again) a long time. 

He pulls up to the hospital and leads the man into the urgent care section, into the arms of a nurse. 

"He fell in a pool and must have hit his head on the way down. I performed CPR, and he's pretty talkative, actually he's obnoxiously talkative. He's rather annoying actually, but he's quite funny, very witty. But, yeah, he might have a concussion." Andrés says, matter-of-fact. The nurse nods and begins to lead him away. 

"Hey!" Andrés calls, against his better judgement, "I never got your name!" 

"My name is Martín," the man, Martín drawls over his shoulder as he walks away down the corridor. "and you better stay the fuck away from me, okay?" 

Andrés stands there in the hospital, alone, the echoes of Martín exclamations swimming around him, and somehow cannot stop the smile spreading across his face.


	3. Chapter 3

Andrés knows better than to think he won't receive a call from Agata before eleven the next morning. At the sound of the shrill ringtone that he always claims he'll change, he eases himself out of bed (laying in it, awake, silent, was all he had scheduled for the day, or everyday, after all) and accepts the call as he slides one curtain to let a little more light in. He watches a young woman jog past, carefree, happy. She isn't about to get berated over the phone by one of the (potentially) scariest people alive. Lucky. 

"Nairobi, to what do I owe the-" he starts, more blasé than he intends. He certainly hasn't forgotten last night's events, and does indeed take them (deadly) seriously, but he can't help himself. He's cut off, which is useful as he found himself without a real plan of what to say anyway. 

"Are you fucking deranged? Were you dropped as a child? Dropped-dropped, not just a light fall, but like thrown, head-first onto concrete as an infant? Is that it?"

"I have missed your voice more than you know."

Agata is silent for a moment. She then begins to swear at him some more. He pulls the phone away from his ear, trying to figure out how long he can easily leave her to curse him. He manages to brush his teeth, and then even gambles the time it takes him to pull a comb through his hair, to find her still yelling. 

"-and don't even get me started on leaving him at the hospital! Have you no shame, Andrés? Do you want everyone else to be just as miserable as you?" He can hear her becoming slightly out of breath during her rant, and he can almost imagine her at her desk at the pool, legs up, ankles resting on the edge, fingers methodically massaging her temples.

"I didn't just leave him, Agata, let's get that straight. He said he had someone coming to get him!"

"Oh. Well that fell through. He's got horrible taste in men, but leave that with me, I'll sort that out. I still think you should have waited for him, though. I was the one that had to drive him home at one o'clock in the morning. I'm in a very strict ovulation regime, Andrés! I can't just be waking up and driving at one o'clock!" It occurs to him that Agata might have missed him too, as her anecdotes become more familiar and comfortable. He misses their relationship, their dynamic, how easy it would be to work together, the pep talks (or maybe a more fitting word would be lecture) she'd give him before matches. 

He tries to recall the last time he'd spoken to Agata, and fails to be able to place it, even for a phone call. Maybe it's the therapy Sergio makes him go to every week, or maybe it's the electricity he felt by speaking to someone new last night, but Andrés is suddenly hit by the reality of the life he's been leading for the last few years. Alone. 

When he was at school they did an experiment with frogs. He was shown that if a frog was dunked into a pot of boiling water, it would leap straight back out, at the shock of the heat. However, when they allowed the water to slowly rise up to temperature while the frog was already inside, that it would remain in there, and simply boil along with the water. Years ago, if his lifestyle changed overnight to be what it was now, he'd refuse it, shocked at how small his social circle became, how bored he is, how simple and robotic his routine is, how little he ventures outside (thank god for online shopping) how incapable he is of finding joy in activities, not being able to swim. But slowly, following the incident, the transition to this depressive, monochromatic way of living has consumed him without barely realising. 

Now, with his phone to his ear and the memories of last night in the forefront of his mind, he realises. He realises what his life has become. And he doesn't like it. 

So, the next thing he says, of course, is, "I want to go to the pool again tonight." 

"Okay," Agata says, clearly suppressing her surprise, "well, firstly, I have to ask you to please not kill any more of my staff. Did you actually swim last night? Or was murder more on your mind?" 

"I didn't swim last night," he lies, for a reason unknown to him; it's just the words that come out when he opens his lips. "He was by the edge when he fell in. I just pulled him straight out." 

"Oh," Agata says, and Andrés can almost hear her thinking about what to say next, "are you going to? I know that you haven't...since...yeah."

"Yeah," he nods, swallowing thickly. He's embarrassed at his inability to speak about it, especially five years on, but the words travel to the front of his tongue and just dissolve, "I don't know, Agata, I just need to make a change. No better place to start, eh?" 

"Yeah, you're right. Well, keep the keys, and don't push yourself too hard, okay?" This whole, caring thing was something they'd never been good at before, more concerned with work, work, work, getting better scores, being better, greater. He doesn't really know what do with it. 

"Thank you, Agata." He says, and it feels more loaded than a simple thank-you for being allowed into the pool after hours again. 

"Thank you, Andrés. Give me a call if you ever want to leave the house during daylight."

"Alright, coach." He teases, and before he hangs up he can hear her cackle. It's nice. 

He spends the rest of the day with the pool on his mind, which is probably to his detriment. At about three in the afternoon, he decides he's overthought the thing entirely, and returns to bed, having given up. It takes him all of twenty minutes to talk himself back into it, the anxiety arising from doing nothing at all causing him to simultaneously and ironically do nothing at all. 

It's five o'clock when he gets in the car and drives to the pool. Another thirty minutes staring at the entrance with his car parked. 

Maybe he wants to bite the bullet, get it out of the way, maybe it's the potential of seeing another human being at this time of the day.

"Come on, Andrés, come on." He whispers to himself, feeling impossibly stupid for being frozen in spot, his hand on the release button of his seatbelt, with the complete capacity to press the button but still not being able to. He thinks he can feel the startings of a panic attack, and is suddenly thankful he wound down the windows on the drive here, thankful for the breeze dancing through the car, reminding him he's outside, that he's made it this far. A win in itself. He closes his eyes and tries to regulate his breathing. In, out, one, two, three. 

"They do say murderers return to the scene of the crime, but I never believed it until now."

Andrés's eyes snap open. There he is. Martín. Leant over to peer into Andrés passenger window. There's an entire car between him, but he still feels comforted by his presence nonetheless. Something about Martín just exudes a calmness, a comfort, a something. 

"Nice stitches." Andrés says, because he's a piece of shit. 

"Fuck off. I told you to stay away from me, but here you are," Martín says, but he's suppressing a soft chuckle nonetheless. "At least you gave me a good story to tell. Everyone's been all over me today." 

In the light of day, he sees a completely different Martín. Possibly in part because he is breathing and not shouting expletives at him, but the bright eyes he saw last night have been replaced with soft, welcoming ones. His mouth the most expressive feature on his face, reacting before his eyes even. He's someone Andrés feels as if he already knows. 

"I'm sorry I left. I thought was what you wanted. Sounds like your boyfriend might not be a murderer, but he's certainly a flake." 

"Yeah, maybe you're right. I've already had a lecture from Agata about it." 

"I recall those very well. She has a very clear sense of right and wrong when it comes to relationships. I've been divorced twice, you see. Glad to see you made it out alive." 

Martín laughs. "Divorced twice? So two people thought they liked you enough to die with you, only to change their minds?" 

"Something like that," Andrés says, buying himself time to think of something to steer the conversation away from the divorces, cursing himself for bringing them up in the first place. "Do you have a ride home? I'm on my way out. That is, if that doesn’t violate your order of ‘staying the fuck away from you’?"

Martín opens the door and secures himself in the passenger seat. "I think you might owe it to me, _Andrés_. Yeah, I know your name now! I realised that you had my name, but I didn’t have yours. That hardly seemed fair, so I described you to Agata. She knew instantly that it was you from my stellar description." 

"And how exactly did you describe me?" Andrés asks, starting the car. His thoughts of swimming have become taken up with the excitement of another conversation with Martín, but he doesn't feel particularly disappointed in himself. This feels like a win in its own way. 

"Tall, dark, handsome, mysterious, a bit abrasive." Martín says, reeling off the qualities like they were items on a shopping list. 

It's almost refreshing for Andrés that Martín didn't recognise him from the news features following the incident at the Olympics. Or if he does, he doesn't let on, and that feels like a small mercy. Not someone else looking at him all pitiful, all disappointed, all upset, all awkward, all embarrassed for him. 

"You think you've got me sussed out, don't you?" 

"Yeah, I do actually, but if you don’t agree," Martín says, pausing and cocking his head towards him with a smile on his lips which can only spell trouble before speaking again. "feel free to prove me wrong.”


	4. Chapter 4

"Andrés?" Martín's voice is tentative, unsure, but also mixed with a dash of intrigue. As if he can't quite figure something out, but is moreover excited to discover it. 

Andrés only hums in reply. It doesn't really answer anything, at it's core, it's just a noise to confirm that he heard. 

"Am I in danger right now? Like, in this car?" 

"What do you mean?" Andrés says, feigning innocence. He tightens his hand on the steering wheel, decides to focus instead on driving. 

"It's just that I keep giving you directions to my house, you know, where you'd said you were taking me, and you, I don't know, keep not taking those turns? Are you hellbent on killing me? What is it this time? Stabbing in the forest?"

Andrés can't help but laugh. It feels nice to laugh. 

"Please," he starts, leaning his head over to look at Martín in the passenger seat. He certainly doesn't look terrified for the security of his life, so Andrés carries on, turning back to the road and taking a sharp left to lead them closer to the destination he has in mind. "If I wanted to kill you, you wouldn't know about it." 

"Good to know," Martín says, seemingly satisfied. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Martín settle a little more in his seat. It seems as if he wants to enjoy the car ride now. Good. "Is this how you treat all of your friends? Take them on mysterious excursions through Madrid?" 

He pauses before saying, "I don't have friends." It's a peculiar thing to admit, and rather sad, but he says it anyway. He notices how he doesn't feel any different after the words are spoken. 

"Oh," His response clearly doesn't work with Martín's perception of him. It's nice to think that he looks like someone who would have lots of friends. He certainly used to. "Pull over, please." 

"But we're nearly there, just like another two miles-"

"Pull over." 

Andrés is in no position to deny him, so he does. He follows Martín's lead and exits the car, finding that Martín has decided to stop them in the middle of nowhere. Just road, and a bit of greenery in the distance greet them. Martín moves around the car to Andrés's side, and stands in front of him, unsure of his next move, before pulling him into a firm embrace. A hug. 

Andrés's instinct is to freeze, his hands hanging limply at his sides. Martín tightens his hold. He smells of chlorine and the cleaning chemicals he associates with the pool mostly, but there's something muskier, deeper, oakier, there too, and then notes of vanilla. He somehow smells exactly how he thought he would. 

His hands slowly rise to Martín's back and he pulls him closer. His eyes sting, he realises. He decides he'll put it down to the smell of the chemicals wafting off of Martín's shoulder. 

Martín doesn't pull back, and Andrés can't bring himself to either, knowing that the power to end the brace lies with him. He can't place exactly when he last had a hug from someone other than his brother. But he also knows that there is a certain threshold for how long a hug with another man who you can barely call a friend can last, and that they've probably passed it. Selfishly, mainly because he's not quite sure when he'll next have a moment as pure, as wholesome, as heart-filling as this, he counts to ten in his head before patting Martín on the back and leaning back until Martín releases his hold. 

He looks at him for a moment, unsure of what to say, unsure if there's anything to say that they didn't just say. Thankfully, it's Martín that moves them back past silence. 

"Are you sure you don't have friends? Not even Agata?" 

Andrés laughs, "She really told you nothing about how we know each other, huh? I don't know, I never really saw us as friends, we were more preoccupied."

Martín's eyes quickly go very wide. 

"Oh. Oh my _god._ I am so sorry! I had no idea, I know you said about the divorces, but she's never mentioned anything about-"

"No! No, not that! We were preoccupied with _winning!_ She is-was- _is_ my coach." 

"I'm sorry, _what?"_

And suddenly they're laughing. Hard. Martín's got his head thrown back, leaning against the door of the car, stabilising himself as he pretty much wheezes. 

"Right, right," Martín says, forcing his breathing to regulate, stray laughs sneaking in between words, "you swim, and Agata is your coach? She's a big deal with that! She's taken people to championships and shit! You must be good! Are you good?" 

"I _was_ good. I won a few medals here and there." 

"Stop. No way," Martín's now laughing in disbelief, the laughs all breathy and confused. He's got a hand on Andrés's upper arm, a tight grip, as if in the even that he let go, that it wouldn't be true anymore. "Oh my god! I know where I recognise you from!" 

_Oh no._

"There's a picture of you, much younger though, with medals. Plural. It's in her office. I mean, it barely looks like you now, you're much older, less of a skinny twenty-something..." 

Andrés lets him carry on as he dwells on the fact that Agata kept that picture in her office after all this time. 

"Yeah," he says, nodding slightly. "2008. Beijing. My first Olympics." He has to bite the word out, but it makes it out all the same. That feels like a win.

"What?! Olympics? Jesus, Andrés! Wow...well, I mean, this does make a lot of sense." 

"How does it make a lot of sense?" Andrés looks over at him, still feeling the hold on his arm, connecting them. 

"Well I thought that you must get the money from somewhere."

"What money?" 

"You just drove us for fifty minutes in a restored vintage Figaro. Last night you drove us to the hospital in a Bentley. A Bentley! I was concussed, but I remember that part well." 

What? He likes cars. 

"So what happened?" Martín asks. 

He knows exactly what he's asking, what he means, but Andrés still asks, "What do you mean?" Just to stall. 

"I've never seen you at the pool before yesterday."

"It's...a bit of a story. I wouldn't want to bore you. I've got to get you home for real, after all." 

He can feel Martín's gaze, feels him understanding. He doesn't chase him for more information, and for that, right now, he's grateful. 

They get back in the car, and Andrés turns them around, and starts to take the directions he's given. It's a quiet drive, but it's comfortable. Nice. He's instructed to park up by a block of apartments not too far from where he lives himself. Martín gets out, comes around the car and crouches down in front of Andrés's window. 

"I never thanked you properly for saving me, you know." 

"No need," Andrés says, waving it off as if it had been that he'd leant him three euros for a coffee instead. "If you mention it again, I'll pull your stitches out." 

"Alright," Martín says, still looking as if he wants to say something else, then always deciding against it. "Because it could have been bad." 

"Well, yeah, you were unconscious after all, Martín." 

"No, I mean," he interrupts, suddenly embarrassed and searching for his next words. "it could have been bad, really bad, because I can't swim. I never learned." 

When Andrés next smiles, it's feral. The next words fall out so fast that he barely registers them. 

"We can't have that, can we? There's water everywhere. You're in a perpetual state of danger! There's only one thing for it. I'll have to teach you." 


	5. Chapter 5

When he gets back home that afternoon, he finally realises the gravity of what he offered to Martín. All very generous of him and that, but it might be virtually impossible to teach a man to swim without getting in the pool himself. Or, if it is possible to teach him, it will certainly be impossible at least to hide the irrational fear he now has of getting in the water. His mind helpfully supplies that he did swim to save Martín, but that was different, wasn't it? Life and death. 

He curses himself. He knows it's stupid. That knowledge still doesn't stop his throat drying up at the very thought. What it is he's scared of exactly, he's not entirely sure. It's not drowning, it's not dying; he'd been close enough to that for a long time, and got very comfortable with the idea of a certain death at the hands of his illness. Now that he's not in a constant state of dying, he still lives without fear of death. 

It's the pride. It's the failure. Humiliation. 

It's no accident he removed the majority of the mirrors in the house two months after the Olympics. He refused to look at himself in that state of failure. It was too embarrassing, too painful. 

After five years, he's embarrassed that he's only made it out of his house a handful of times. Horrified of the way he'd been so dependent on Sergio, and even then treated him horribly. Meeting Martín gave him a taste of what he'd been missing. Human connection, laughter, companionship. Meeting Martín showed him how much of a recluse he'd become. And it's not to say that he liked his life before, because it certainly had its issues (namely, his first wife Belle), but he missed events, waltzing in with someone on his arm, drinking with Agata, dancing, working the room, schmoozing, being someone people wanted to approach. Even then, he realises now, he'd been lacking genuine human connection. 

When your life revolves around winning, when you lose, you have to figure out what you actually have. For Andrés, the realisation was that he believed he had nothing. And that's a difficult fact to encounter and overcome. A fact he still has yet to fully encounter and overcome. 

But now? He finds himself typing frantically on his laptop (he overlooks the fact that he had to brush dust off of the keys) on how to teach swimming to adults. He watches videos, makes notes, draws diagrams, orders floatation devices online. It's dark by the time he feels any inclination to pause, stretching slightly. 

He's got another two days until their lesson, but he always did like to be prepared. 

He even sends a text to Agata, cryptically asking how she would teach an adult to swim. He laughs as he reads the words 'tell them to kick their legs and move their arms you idiot'. His laughter makes his house feel emptier all of a sudden, echoing through the different rooms. He lifts the lid of his laptop and resolves to watch more videos. He allows himself to embrace the fact that he's excited. That planning, researching swimming for Martín's benefit had been...enjoyable. 

On the fateful thursday they agreed to meet, Andrés parks up, pulls out his bag full of notes and equipment and unlocks the centre with his keys. He'd known he'd be there first, but it's still odd to walk into a derelict pool. He feels compelled to jump in. No one can see after all. His legs don't move. He stays where he was. 

He decides to not get changed, accepting that today won't be the day he swims, deciding instead to sit on one of the seats he remembered Agata screaming the words 'faster, faster, fucking move!' to him on more than one occasion. 

He arranges the floats he bought as he waits for Martín to arrive. He's ten minutes late, but then again, Martín didn't strike him as someone who turned up early to things. He surprises a chuckle to himself at the sight of the child's armbands he bought as a joke. A joke that Andrés certainly took too seriously, staring at a screen for ten whole minutes deciding whether seahorses or unicorns were more appropriate. He bought both in the end, imagining that he might eventually swim at the same time as Martín. It might take two sessions, it might take fifteen, but as determined as he was to train Martín, he was just as determined to get himself back in the pool. As much as he's generous, he's also violently selfish. He's sure that Martín wouldn't mind. 

He doesn't get to ask if Martín minds. He doesn't come. 

He gives him all of thirty-six minutes before going home. It takes four minutes to deflate all of the pool floats, and he sadly watches a neon pink ring hiss as it releases all of the air he excitedly blew into it. He rolls them up, puts them back into his duffel bag, and throws the entire bag on the top of the wastebasket round the back of the building as he walks back to his car. 

He lays in bed that night wondering what he'd said. What he'd done. 

It's Friday when he wakes up. He's used to the quiet of his house, but today it feels much quieter. So quiet that he's sure he can hear Sergio's footsteps on the way to the door before he begins to knock. He's surprised to see him. Sergio normally schedules his visits for a Monday, he's a man of routine. 

Behind Sergio is a man he's never seen before. He'd be apprehensive, but the man holds what looks like expensive suits, so Andrés feels inclined to let them both in. 

"You cannot tell me you forgot," Sergio says, clearly annoyed. There's no use lying to his brother, he already has his answer. "I told you weeks ago I would bring a tailor to you for our suit fitting! I even wrote it on that calendar." His brother accusingly points to said calendar. Andrés shrugs. 

"I gave you my measurements. I know how I like my suits. It's you that insisted we should have a fitting." 

"Yes, because I thought it might be nice, Andrés!" Sergio's very clearly agitated, and Andrés instantly dreads Sergio's actual wedding day. 

Andrés decides to indulge him. Allows himself to be tailored. He actually very much appreciates Sergio's thought to bring the tailor to them and so offers to open a nice bottle of whiskey, even though he knows Sergio will refuse it. 

"I have to pick Paula up from space club at half three. I won't be showing up intoxicated, Andrés." Sergio says, admonishing. Andrés attempts to send the tailor telepathic signals to prick Sergio with a pin. Or two. 

"Space club," Andrés scoffs as he rolls the fabric of his jacket to show the tailor how long he'd like it. "what do they do? Draw stars? Make little rockets?"

"It's very advanced, actually. I arrived early to collect her one week, and I even learned something new about supernovas. Her teacher is very -ow!"

"Sorry." The tailor says, and Andrés sends him a silent thank you in the form of a wink. Maybe he does have telepathic powers after all. 

The tailor leaves not long after, and Sergio seems to indulge himself by making himself a coffee and sitting on the couch.

"How is the wedding planning coming along, then?" Andrés asks, remembering well how much involvement he insisted in having for his own. Sergio doesn't strike him quite as interested. In fact, Raquel actually recruited Andrés's help to convince Sergio to not book flights to somewhere desolate and elope. 

"Booked the cake last week. It tasted-"

"Tasted like true love?"

"No, Andrés. It tasted like cake. Lemon flavoured, actually. I never had any idea of how much we actually needed to book, to pay out money for." 

Andrés laughs. "How much have you spent on napkins?" 

"Too much. We only have sixty guests! I only have like ten friends, and well the family situation for us is..."

"Dead and buried?"

"Indeed," Sergio nods, sending him a look that Andrés can't quite read. "but I can't deny Raquel a thing. Whatever she wants, whoever she wants on the list, that's what I want to do."

"Hold on Sergio, write that down. Poetry! For your vows. Well, it's not quite poetry, but for you, it's rather impressive." Andrés stands, and makes himself his own coffee. He feels particularly generous today, as if his friendship with Martín had finished as soon as it had started, he might as well try to salvage a friendship with his brother, so pulls out a packet of biscuits he knows Sergio likes. 

"Thank you," Sergio says as he takes two and dunks one into his espresso. He's a man of predictability, after all. "The vow writing is...difficult. I want to tell her how much she means to me, obviously, but in front of everyone we know? That feels..."

"Intimate? Exposing?" 

"Yes," nodding, Sergio reaches for another biscuit, as anticipated. "I know you've been out." He says, and suddenly Andrés is the one feeling exposed. 

"And?" 

"Well I saw your car was gone on Tuesday. I just thought it was good, I suppose. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend."

"No, I know," Andrés concedes. "I've been to the pool once or twice." 

"Oh." Sergio says, sounding genuinely surprised. "That's good." 

"Yeah, well, we'll see." 

Sergio sees that as an opportunity to leave, but not before shimmying another biscuit out of the wrapper. 

Andrés pulls him into a hug, releasing him before he says something to ruin it. Sergio gives him a smile he can't decipher, and then he's gone. 

It's only three minutes later that he hears another knock at the door. 

Sergio. Again. 

"My car won't start. I need to be at Paula's school in...twenty seven minutes." 

"It's alright. I'll call a mechanic or an engineer or something. Take the Figaro. She likes the Figaro." Andrés says, remembering well the time he took Paula to the zoo. That had been a spectacularly good day. He's all but closing the door in Sergio's face when he speaks again. 

"I can't drive your car! I'm not insured. What if I damage it? What if I'm pulled over? Please, Andrés." 

"Fine!" 

The sound of Sergio's panicked phone calling is almost entertaining, but not as much as it is annoying. Andrés is trying to drive, after all. 

"I've been on hold for fifteen minutes, Andrés! Stop pulling that face. I have to be at a meeting with Tokyo tomorrow morning. I can't just take a train!" 

He slows down to park in front of Paula's school when Sergio finally gets through to a mechanic. He gives Andrés a pleading look. A gesture. Go on, it'll be fine. 

So that's how he manages to stand in a gaggle of parents outside of his niece's school on a Friday afternoon. He nods to some of the parents who dare to make eye contact with him, and even declares to one mother that he's here to collect "Paula, my niece."

The kids come flooding out, and Andrés has to stifle a laugh as he sees them all carrying handmade rockets. The parents leave, ruffling their offsprings' hair and complaining about the state of their uniforms. He's left with the kids still waiting for their parents to arrive when he sees his niece. Paula cocks her head, surprised to see him clearly, before tackling his legs. 

"Andrés! I haven't seen you in...forever!" She says, beaming up at him, before handing him her backpack, lunchbox and cardigan, electing to hold onto the rocket. Of course. 

"I know, _sobrina._ I've missed our talks. Have you read any more Dickens?" 

"I started reading a book about space instead! Let me show you! It's..." Paula pulls her bag back from Andrés to rummage for said book, before looking up at him confused. "It's not in here." 

She hands the bag back to Andrés to search through, as if a bag containing a fluffy toy and a water bottle has any obscurity as to whether it also contains a book. 

"Paula," a voice calls out. "You left your book...you have got to be fucking kidding me- Oh my god, I am so sorry kids, do not tell your parents I said that." 

"Señor Berrote, that was a very bad word." Paula points out, and damn if Andrés doesn't see a little bit more of Raquel in her daughter every time he sees her. 

"Yes, it was, Paula." Andrés and Martín say simultaneously. 

"Paula's yours?" Martín asks, clearly confused. "I mean I've met her mother Raquel and Sergio of course, but...oh my god, are you Raquel's ex-husband?" 

"No. No way," Andrés says instantly. He's certainly not an angel, but he's not that piece of shit Raquel managed to escape. "I'm Sergio's brother." 

It is impossible to comprehend that everyone in his life (well, out of Agata, Sergio and Raquel) manages to already know Martín. 

"Oh thank god, I've heard some not quite nice things about Paula's father. I knew you wouldn't be like that, but-" Martín says quietly as Paula wanders off to chat with a classmate. 

"It's okay," Andrés says. He searches for the next words, attempts to form them on the tip of his tongue a few times before actually speaking. "I was disappointed to be stood up for our lesson."

Martín gasps. 

"Oh my god. Shit! Sorry kids, fuck!" Martín's panic is absolutely endearing. And hilarious. "I am so sorry, Andrés. It completely slipped my mind. I've been doing all of these things and I..."

Against his better judgement, Andrés puts a hand on his shoulder and says. "It's okay."

"I still really want to!" Martín says, pulling out his phone and thrusting it in Andrés's direction. "hey, put your number in there, and we can arrange it properly, okay?" 

"Yes. I'd like that." 

When Andrés returns to the car, Sergio pulls Paula into a hug. When he asks her how school was, he seems confused when both Paula and Andrés respond with. "It was really good."


	6. Chapter 6

"You know, Andrés," Martín says, adjusting his neon orange armbands. Andrés managed to recover his bag of equipment, thankful for the lack of urgency Agata seems to feel about booking a waste collection. He will deny to anyone that he had to reach into the trash and sift through rubbish to find said bag. Of course Martín chose the seahorse armbands. "When I agreed to swimming lessons, this isn't quite what I had in mind." 

"How so?" Andrés asks innocently, handing him a purple snorkel. The man is fully kitted out, fully protected. Andrés even likes his swimming trunks, which definitely look new. Did Martín buy those just for this? 

"Well, I kind of imagined not being treated like a glass ornament. It's like you've got me in bubble wrap!" Martín exclaims, poking at the rubber ring around his midriff. 

"Let's not forget you've nearly drowned once already, Martín. I'm just taking the necessary precautions for your own safety." Or, he's taking the necessary precautions to prevent any eventualities in which he has to find himself in the pool saving Martín again. He curses himself for thinking of his own safety in the pool above Martín's, a man who literally cannot swim. 

"Alright, but I'm not putting the snorkel on," Martín laughs fondly. It's a delightful sound. "so lesson one. Swimming." 

"The course is swimming. Lesson one is..." 

"Swimming?" He hadn't expected Martín to be a difficult student, but he's certainly not surprised. 

"No. Floating! Come on, let's start on the shallower end." Andrés leads them to a staircase into the water and gestures for Martín to take a step. 

"Are you not coming?" Martín asks, turning his head back, three steps down into the water, the image of his shins dancing around the ripples. 

"Do I look like I'm dressed to swim?"

"Well, no. I did feel a bit awkward asking why you were in a suit, I just assumed you might be going to a funeral or something-"

"A funeral? You see this beautiful specimen of a suit and your first thought is funeral?"

"Yeah, or maybe a wedding? It's very formal for a swimming lesson, Andrés." 

"Be careful I don't push you in." Andrés says, but completely lacking malice. In the few times he's seen Martín, he's discovered quickly his quality of being impossible to be actually annoyed at. He can barely feign annoyance. 

"But what do I know? I just imagined that swimming teachers would wear wetsuits or something. My mother was too busy resenting me to take me to swimming lessons." 

"That's horrible, Martín. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise," Martín waves off, taking another step into the pool. Andrés wonders what the temperature is like, how it feels on the skin. "just imagine for a second her absolute horror when she found out I was gay!" With that, Martín releases his hold on the arm rail and looks up at Andrés, seemingly surprised.

"What?"

"I can stand." 

"Yeah? How deep did you think pools were? You aren't Alice going down an infinite rabbit hole. It's normally about metre and a half or two." 

"Oh. So what do I do now?" 

Andrés is struck by the sudden realisation that he's not a very good teacher. All of the notes, all of the research did very little to aid any sense of a lesson plan. For something that used to be so automatic, so instinctual, to then explain the ins and outs of how to swim to someone else is practically impossible.

"Um, start to take the weight off of your legs, so that you're suspended- oh my _god!_ Not like that!" 

How Martín managed to capsize himself that fast can only be a record. For a moment, all he can see is Martín's legs and the underside of the rubber ring. He doesn't particularly fancy performing CPR again, so he crouches down at the edge, reaches for Martín's leg and pulls him closer before using his other hand to rebalance him. 

Martín's head bursts forth from the water with a gasp. He coughs a few times before wiping his face with his hand. Both things having been submerged in water moments ago, it seems a futile gesture, but Andrés is thankful to see it all the same rather than a lack of motion. That would have been less than fun. And for the second time too! He doesn't dare think about how he'd explain that to Agata this time. 

"I did tell you to wear the snorkel."

"Andrés! It's those shitting floats! The balance is all off, it's fucked with my centre of gravity." Martín's hand re-latches onto the arm rail and he pulls himself out of the water step by step. For a moment, Andrés is convinced that Martín's going to leave, that this will all be over, but then Martín just shimmies out of the rubber ring, removes his armbands and steps back into the pool. 

"Right. What were you saying about the legs?" Martín looks up at him, so ready to learn, so willing. 

"Let's try this instead. Put your hands on the edge, here, in front of me - yes like that - and then can you walk your legs up a little on the wall?...Perfect. Right. Next, you're going to let go of your hands, and then you'll be laying on your back. If you relax, you'll float, okay? I'll grab your feet to stabilise you, okay?" 

Martín gives him a firm nod before releasing his hands. He hesitantly straightens his knees out as his arms reach out into the nothingness of the water, seemingly searching for something to grab. Andrés takes a hold of his feet, and for a moment Martín is perfectly floating, and even makes a strangled noise of surprise and triumph before losing some of his balance. He splashes about, panicking. 

"Hey, hey, relax! You're fine! I've got you," Andrés calls out to him, determined. "Stop moving! It's all core strength, Martín."

"I've never been to fucking yoga, you fuck! You didn't tell me I needed pre-existing core...oh my god I'm doing it. I'm doing it, Andrés!" 

He is. Perfectly still. Arms outstretched in a way the catholics may approve of, his skin just meeting the illuminous pool, making him glow too. He looks like an angel. A floating angel. Andrés doesn't know what good karma (if any at all) he accumulated during his reclusive five years meant that he gets to be friends with Martín, but in this moment, he feels grateful, thankful, nonetheless. 

The angel starts to swear again, and suddenly the illusion is broken. 

"I mean, this is so fucking weird! It's like I'm flying. I understand all of those fuckers at uni obsessed with hydraulics now. Water, man! I mean, shit!" 

"You have a degree?"

"Don't sound so surprised," Martín says, so casually that Andrés almost forgets that he's in the water. "I actually have a masters in aerospace engineering."

"Then why are you cleaning this pool on the evenings?"

"A favour to Agata. She's a good friend to me." 

"Space club?"

"I like space, okay?...and it's a favour to someone else. The headteacher, my friend Monica, she needed another after-school club. Too much dancing allegedly. There's only so much salsa you can teach eight year olds after all. Not that I'm a teacher, though, I just show them videos and tell them cool facts."

"Paula seems to like it." It's the closest thing to a compliment he's given in ages, but judging by how a smile pulls across Martín's face, it works.

"She's a great kid," Martín says. It's true; she is a great kid. She's the only kid he can tolerate. "I still can't believe you and Sergio are brothers! It...makes so much sense, actually. Oh my god. So much sense. I have so many questions. So many." 

Andrés allows himself to choke out one laugh before tightening his hold on Martín's feet. "Come on, that's enough floating. You made good progress today. You're my star pupil." 

"Really?" Martín says, all mock-excitement. He places his feet back on the floor of the pool and is suddenly safely standing again. He smiles. "Can I have a gold star? Will you write a letter home to my parents?" 

"No, but you have earned the next lesson."

"And what will that be?"

"I haven't decided yet. I don't think I'm a very good tutor." 

"Well I feel like I learned something, even if it was just that pools have a floor." 

Martín steps out of the pool and reaches for his towel, which Andrés softly throws across to him. Martín just about catches it before it falls into the pool. 

"An olympic swimmer, but not a thrower. I'll make a note of that," Martín says lightly over his shoulder as he approaches the showers. "I'll say goodbye before I go, okay?" He calls before he turns the corner. 

Andrés hears the shower start up, and for a minute, the falling water of Martín's shower is all that he can hear, before he hears Martín softly singing to himself. The man is an enigma. It's exciting to be around him, wondering which piece of information will reveal itself this time. 

Andrés packs up his bag, pulling the zip along before turning back to the pool. It's staring at him again.

It holds so much pain, so much humiliation, but Andrés can't take his eyes away from the way it glows. Martín's had two near-death experiences in this very pool in the last week and he still got back in. Andrés even swam to save Martín, but that fact seems irrelevant. As if it doesn't count. It's surely not the same. Swimming to save isn't the same as swimming. Not at all. 

You can't be humiliated if no one sees you, right?

He puts his bag back down with a soft thud. It feels like he's already made a decision, but what that decision is, he isn't entirely sure. His fingers move to unlace one of his shoes. He doesn't dare take the other off. That would feel like far too much. Rolling down his sock, he's extremely aware that he has no idea at all of what he's going to do. 

With one singular bare foot, he stares back at the pool. Takes a breath. And another. And then one more, just for luck. Lets the air feel all the way into his lungs, the cool of it running down his throat soothingly. 

It's been five years. 

Tentatively, he places his foot on the first step into the pool and feels the water flood between his toes. 


	7. Chapter 7

At his foot, he can feel the soft, rounded ridges of the tiles covering the step he stands on. With one foot safely secured in a sock and shoe and settled on the ground, his bare, submerged foot feels adventurous. It lifts, hovering in the water, surrounded completely by little ripples responding to the movement. 

Andrés can't navigate how it feels. There's a feeling, but when he searches himself for it, it feels impossible to reach. It's not panic, which is surprising. His breathing is steady, his skin doesn't feel tight or as if it was burning. He almost feels like panicking because he's not panicking. He wonders what had stopped him from doing this for the last five years. Why it was this, tiny morsel of contact between the water and himself, tied only together by his foot, that scared him the most. It wasn't the water that had taken everything from him, isolated him, turned him into a recluse. He'd done that. He'd done that to himself. Whatever happened in the water on that day happened. Millions of factors led to the outcome that day. He could blame it on the water, blame it on the disease, blame it on the twenty-four minutes he missed of sleep the night before, blame it on the weather, blame it on Sergio, blame it on the cursed American swimmer in the lane next to him. Regardless, it happened. But everything that happened after? That was on him. That came from Andrés himself. He isolated himself, stayed indoors, and let the years pass by. 

Now that's the thought that panics him. 

_"Andrés!"_

Sergio. 

He looks behind his shoulder. Sergio's not here. Of course he's not. 

Andrés pulls his foot out of the water as if it had been set to boil. His hand flies to his chest, feeling it expand and fall in quick succession. He wills it to slow, closes his eyes (the water is still staring at him, after all), forcing his mind to go somewhere else, to focus on anything else. 

The dulcet (if you could call it that) tones of Martín seem to get louder. He's still singing. He's really giving a show by the sounds of it, as if, beyond the walls of the showers there were millions of fans cheering him on for the last and final encore. Not that he's particularly that good, but he seems to be showing off all the same. Andrés wonders if he knows he can hear. He must do. 

His breathing seems to have decided to return to some sort of regularity, and he can no longer hear Sergio's cries of panic in his ears, just some wailing coming from the showers. He reaches for a towel, dries his foot, and he's relacing his shoe when he hears the shower stop. Pulling the bag over his shoulder again, he starts to make his way in the direction of the showers. 

Martín emerges from the corner, running the towel across his head, vigorously rubbing it into his hair with the seeming intent of drying it, but instead looking as if he's having a mild seizure. 

"Ready?" Martín asks, removing the towel from his head and laying it across his shoulders. 

Andrés nods, gesturing for Martín to lead the way out of the centre while he sends one last look to the pool over his shoulder. _Stop looking at me._

When they approach Andrés's car and Martín asks him if he has any plans for the rest of the evening, Andrés has to stop himself from scoffing. Of course he hasn't got plans. He'd spent all day thinking about this very lesson, and now it's done. His plans for the day are over, and thus, the day is now over. 

"It's just," Martín says, putting his hand to his ear. Of course he managed to get water in his ear. Rookie mistake. Or, it's a rookie teacher mistake of Andrés's. He should have prevented that for his student. Or at least warned the poor man. "you look like you could use a drink. Or a dance." 

Well, he's probably right. 

Whatever expression crosses over his face, Martín seems to take as his answer. 

"Don't worry about it, it was just a thought." He pulls a set of keys out of his back pocket with his free hand, still seeming to have issues with his flooded ear, and stretches his arm towards his car, the lights illuminating his face a spectacular orange as he unlocks it. 

"No!" Andrés says, far too fast and far too loud. "I could go for a drink. Anywhere in walking distance?" 

The resulting grin on Martín's mouth is delightful.

"I know a place." He says. "Put your jacket in your car. You'll definitely get something spilled on it." 

"Martín," Andrés says, raising his voice above the music of the club blaring through his eardrums. "Where are the women?" 

He can hear Martín's laugh over the music, can feel the shudder of his chest as Martín continues to guide him towards the bar, his hands firmly on Andrés's upper arms. "Oh my god! Fuck! Sorry, Andrés. Sometimes I just forget that other people aren't gay. It happens all the time, far too much actually." 

He doesn't sound very sorry, and his face shows no remorse as he orders them drinks, using a string of words which are noticeably not 'two glasses of Salon 1996 Blanc de Blancs'. 

When Andrés is handed a tiny plastic green shot glass, containing something pink, he can't help but stare at Martín, who's already engulfed two, and in quick succession too.

"Go on," Martín exclaims, guiding Andrés's hand towards his mouth. "down the hatch!" 

It tastes awful, there's no denying that. Luckily, the face he makes at the taste of whatever poison that was is enough to make Martín shrug and adopt the remaining shot and hail another bartender over to order something more sippable. 

"Do they sell wine?" 

"Fuck all the way off," Martín says, horrified, his head rolling back towards Andrés. "You really have never been to a club before, huh? Not even a straight one?" 

It's true. Through the training in his teens and the competitive swimming career in his twenties, there wasn't really time to slip out and go to the greasiest and sleaziest club he could find. Instead, he became more accustomed to the wines and whiskeys found in galas and charity events. 

"Martín!" The bartender exclaims, because of course she does. It seems everyone knows Martín everywhere they go at this rate, from the burly bouncer on the door who let them both skip the line just from a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Martín, to this bartender, reaching and climbing over the bar to embrace him. 

"Manila, can you get something for my friend here? The closest thing you have to wine, please." Martín chuckles out, his hand meeting Andrés's upper arm again and squeezing, as if checking he was still there. 

The bartender, Manila, eyes him. 

"Well, there's nothing close to wine, Martín," she says, turning to consult the bar, as if she'd never been asked for anything other than shots and cocktails before. "How many have you had?" 

"An amount. Andrés didn't like his. Couldn't let them go to waste." Martín shrugs. It's been a matter of minutes, but he can already see the softening of Martín's shoulders and the lazy smile finding its way across his lips. He wonders what kind of drunk he'll be. 

"Andrés?" Manila says, looking straight at Martín, speaking as if he's the only one that can hear. It's quieter, but she's still having to speak over the music. "As in swimming lessons Andrés?"

Martín puts a finger to her lips. Without any semblance of an explanation, he turns to Andrés, slings his arm around his shoulders and pulls him to the dancefloor. 

Andrés wishes he'd been able to get a drink before they'd left the bar, but he figures that he might need to retain some sort of sobriety in order to get the man in front of him home safely. Again. The man, who presently is jumping, leaping up and down to the beat of a song Martín seems to know every single word to, performing once again. 

Martín reaches for Andrés's arms, sliding his grip towards his hands as he raises them, pulling them towards him one at a time in an attempt to get him to dance. Maybe it's whatever was in that shot glass, but Andrés lets himself be pulled, responds to the movement, until they are dancing, together, at the same time, their movements meeting and mirroring each other, without any sense of communication. Or, with all sense of communication. It's like he knows exactly which way Martín's about to turn, or when he's about to sway. Songs come and go, passing through their bodies and leaving their trace. He watches Martín's shirt cling closer to his chest, dance move by dance move as the room increases in temperature. He's breathless, he realises. They both are. He regrets not demanding a proper drink again. 

At one point, Martín pauses, and tries to shake some more water out of his ear. It doesn't work, but he still makes the whole affair into a new dance move anyway. 

"I can't hear shit out of this ear, Andrés!" He shouts. "Is this what it's like every time? I'm never swimming again!" 

_Me neither,_ Andrés wants to say. Instead, he says. "Come on, let's go outside, the music's probably making it feel worse." 

At Martín's "What?", Andrés huffs, and pulls him towards the door he sees someone else enter through. 

As his ears adjust to the lack of assault, he has smoke blown into his face by a man who just winks at him in response. 

"Ooh, can I have one?" Martín asks, excited, and Andrés rolls his eyes as the man places a cigarette between Martín's lips and then leans far too close to light it. 

Andrés leads them to an emptier space where he can lean against the wall, watching as Martín smokes. He raises his hand to his ear, taps it a few times and blows out more smoke in a frustrated huff. 

"Here," Andrés says, tilting Martín's face gently so that it rests on his shoulder. "you're an engineer, you should know that you need to let gravity do the work." 

Martín hums, continuing to smoke. It's the quietest he's been the whole time he's known him so far. 

"Oh, there it goes," he says, lifting his head slightly. "you were right." 

It doesn't escape Andrés that Martín then returns his head to his shoulder, even though the water has cleared. 

They return to the silence, but it doesn't feel like a silence. It doesn't feel like the silence that comes with loneliness, or the silence that comes the moment after you shut a door, or the silence after you say something outlandishly offensive. It's an understanding. An acceptance. An acceptance that words don't need to be used right now. He likes it. 

That said, it doesn't take long for Martín to break the silence. 

"Are you happy, Andrés?" 

What an odd question. This man. 

"No." 

The answer comes out quicker than he'd intended, and to be honest, he's surprised that it came out at all. Maybe it's the fact that with Martín's head on his shoulder, he can't meet his gaze, has no way of seeing his reaction to such a depressing admission. Has no way of witnessing the pity. Maybe it's that cursed shot of pink poison. Unlikely, but not impossible. 

"Oh." Martín says, although he does say it as if it was the answer he had expected to hear. 

"Are you?" He asks, in an attempt to move the focus off of him. 

Martín hums again and then shrugs. 

"Maybe," Martín ponders, as if he were instead weighing up the advantages of having chicken over fish for dinner. "I mean, there are definitely aspects of my life which could be improved, but I have a lot to be thankful for. I'm alive, after all. I'm here, standing here, right now, and that's something." 

Andrés's breath catches at that. He tries to hide it by coughing. It works; Martín takes it as a response to the smoke and laughs as he throws the last of his cigarette to the ground and stamps on it twice. 

"Time just keeps passing me by." He confesses, crossing his arms tighter across his chest. He feels exposed, despite being in the same white dress shirt he's been in all day. 

"What do you-"

"I'm stuck," he says quickly, as if he were to wait any longer, the word would change its mind. He pauses for a minute while he searches for the right words. He feels Martín's head peel off his shoulder to look at him, and that feels both worse and better. "I...something happened, to me, that is. The world kept going, and I let it. I'm still there, I think."

Martín doesn't say anything, just returns his head to its rightful place on Andrés's shoulder. 

"It's no life." Andrés says bitterly, staring at the ground, as if it's a place devoid of shame and pity. It's not; a rock seems to be particularly judgemental at this time of night. 

"I'm no expert, Andrés..." Martín says, massively more sober than he was when they first stepped outside. Any sentence that starts with 'I'm no expert' never ends well, especially paired with Martín's peculiar mind. Andrés prepares himself to laugh at whatever is going to be said next."...but I don't think it's too late to have a life." 

He desperately wants to believe him. 

The laugh dies in his throat. He feels compelled to cry again. This keeps happening when he's around Martín. That simply cannot stand. The only logical thing is to never see him again. That cannot stand either. 

He wants to say something stupid like _thank you_ or something silly like _you are important to me right now._

Instead he says, "the stars are out." 

"They are indeed," Martín agrees, looking up. "you know the constellations?"

"No, but I have a horrible feeling you're about to tell me." 

"That group of stars there," Martín says, pointing unspecifically to the sky. "that's the Pleiades. There has been lots of debate in the science community about how far away we are to them. Years of debates. Loads of research. The debate is settled at the moment, but it only takes a tiny result to set it off again." 

"And how far away is it?" Andrés asks, genuinely curious.

"Really far away." 

The volume and ferocity of their laughter attracts the attention of everyone outside. They giggle like school children when they notice all of the eyes on them. 

"That's it? You don't know the myths of the constellations, the stories?" 

"I'm a man of science, not poetics." Martín says, but Andrés can't help but feel like it's a lie. Everything about the man is poetic. He moves in theatrics, his words belonging not to his lips but to literature beyond their years, his manner, his entire state of being inspiring works of art. He's rather magnificent. Like planets, not stars, Martín has orbited around Andrés's life in the time he neglected to live it. Now, he's thankful, excited, that they're beginning to collide. 


	8. Chapter 8

Across the next six swimming lessons, and the two months that holds them, the swimming progress is...a bit suspect. The numbers do not quite add up. Five lessons in total, and Martín hasn't learned one stroke. Not for lack of trying, though. The man complains every lesson. Of course he does. He's not even particularly inventive with his complaints, Andrés deciding that ' _just let me fucking swim'_ is his personal favourite. 

Presently, Andrés is sat at the side of the pool, both (both!) feet submerged in the water up to his knees. He's gesturing wildly, explaining in great depth about this week's technique of treading water. Andrés, for fear of having to perform CPR yet again, elected on the second lesson to teach him how to tread water, in the event that ' _you find yourself in the deep sea, stranded off a boat'._ Martín had scoffed, made a joke about the likelihood of sharks also being present in said dangerous water, but had happily complied and learned in a neat hour how to bicycle his legs and use his arms simultaneously to keep his above the water. 

The truth is, Martín is perfectly capable of swimming. Once he got a sense for balance and became comfortable with the fact that pools did indeed have a floor, Martín quickly became at ease in the water. And that is precisely Andrés's current problem. Not because Martín, after becoming increasingly agitated with ' _not learning how to swim properly'_ decided to invent his own swimming stroke. That wasn't a problem. The man did have his seahorse armbands on, was equipped with a technique of how to keep himself alive, and thus had no risk to his safety. It was also rather entertaining, watching him flail about, replicating some sort of stroke he claimed to have seen on a movie once. 

The problem is that Andrés is enjoying himself too much. The word 'lesson' is very loose, where Andrés will teach him a different way to tread water. There's a finite amount of ways to do that, Andrés is very aware of that, but still cites that ' _in the event you are lost at sea, Martín, you may well forget ten techniques of treading water. Won't you be thanking me that you know eleven?'_ Once he's guided Martín through that (verbally, mainly, although he is getting rather good at miming how to swim while stood on the side of the pool) Martín will attempt to do his own thing for a bit, and then will elect to float on his back for a bit while they then talk for a longer time than the actual teaching took. 

Sue the man if he may have invented some new techniques of treading water for Martín to try. He's stalling time of course. Once he teaches Martín the proper strokes, it won't be long until the tuition is over. Martín, of course, is a very quick learner. Rather than impressed, like he should have been, like Martín had wanted him to be as he bounded over to the edge of the pool where Andrés had been sat and beamed up at him, Andrés was disappointed. How dare he speed through the teachable content. 

The talking is nice. They learn absolutely ridiculous things about each other, things that Andrés doesn't recall sharing with anyone else. He smiles fondly at the memory of Martín crying with laughter as Andrés retold the story of how he managed to 'accidentally' insult every member of the royal family at a charity gala through a speech he'd given. Martín had laughed so hard that Andrés had wished that he'd been there. Wished that they'd met ten years ago, not ten weeks ago. Wished that Martín could have leaned on the bars of events and galas with him, lazily sipping champagne and pretending to look interested while a rolodex of sports professionals spoke stories of glory. Wished that Martín had been there when he'd had the accident. Wished that he could have called Martín from the hospital during the treatment rather than sitting in silence. What's good about Martín is that he doesn't probe. He doesn't pry. He doesn't listen to a bit of information from Andrés's past career, digest it, then ask for more. He asks helpful questions like ' _and what exactly did you say to the prince's pregnant wife?'_ or ' _and how much champagne had you consumed by then?'._ It's like he appreciates the trust Andrés bestows on him with the information tied up in a murky and treacherous past, and isn't greedy with it. 

The added bonus with the talking during the lessons is the fact that it's enough of a distraction to help Andrés slip his feet further into the water. If Martín notices the first time that unlaces both (both!) of his shoes, slips off his socks and hovers them over the water for thirty minutes, he doesn't let on. Doesn't say a word. Doesn't raise an eyebrow. By the fourth lesson, Andrés had managed to keep his feet in the water, up to his ankles, for the remainder of the session, while Martín told stories about his time at university. 

If the lessons stop, Andrés fears that his own progress will stop as well. Irrational, granted, but it's the selfish fear that warps itself around him. 

"Surely," Martín says while skimming his fingers on the top of the water while his legs mimic a frog's. "there cannot be more techniques of treading water to learn." 

"There's one more I can think of, off the top of my head. I should probably research more, just for your safety." Andrés lies. He's exhausted his reserves of techniques, and scoured the internet and all the books on swimming (the books he _thought_ he'd burned, _thanks Sergio)_ he found in the garage. 

"Fuck my safety!" Martín exclaims. He's not angry though, he's got a wide smile on his face. Somehow, that's worse than anger because Andrés has realised that he instinctively matches the smiles. "I wanna swim!" 

"As your teacher..."

"Fuck you!"

"The course I have prepared is very..."

"Fuck that!" The man certainly has a colourful vocabulary. 

"Anything else?" Andrés asks, cocking his head. His expression can only hold amusement. It's rare that such an onslaught of cursing towards him would elicit anything other than a matched rage, but here he is, not angry, but instead suppressing a laugh. 

"What?" 

"Anything else to 'fuck', as you so delicately put it?" 

Martín, the bastard, actually pauses to think. He's just about to retort with something probably very witty, but Andrés never gets to hear it, because a different voice sounds out across the pool. 

"And what the fuck is going on here?" 

Agata, in a tracksuit with a shade of blue that Andrés now only can associate with her, stands at the entrance, arms crossed. She doesn't look particularly angry, but if he's learned anything during the years, it's that he cannot trust that fact.

"Agata!" Martín exclaims, turning towards her. He speeds up his pace of treading water, apparently just to show off. "Look at me! I'm swimming! Well, actually, I'm not. I don't think this counts..."

Agata makes her way around the edge of the pool, silent. Andrés has the horrible feeling that he's about to be told off. 

"When I let you keep the keys to the pool, this isn't entirely what I'd had in mind, Andrés." 

She's right. Andrés is sure that she would have been delighted to drop by unannounced like she is now, to find him swimming lengths and timing his laps. For some reason, he feels embarrassed. Part of him wants that too. Another part of him wants everything but that. It's the first time he's seen her in person, the first time in a long time. She somehow looks the same. He knows that he doesn't. Very aware of that fact. 

He decides to ignore her. A technique he perfected during training. 

"You've come at the perfect time, Nairobi," he says, throwing in her nickname just for good measure, "my star pupil was just about to do a somersault in the water!" 

"I was going to do what now? 

"Go on, Martín," he says, sending him a look, but what he's trying to communicate exactly, he's not sure. "show off for our friend here. She's come such a long way tonight to see your progress." "

"You're such an ass, Andrés," Agata says, as she sits down next to him. "I'd almost forgotten how much I hated you." She's lying of course. Or, at least he hopes she is. 

"The feeling is mutual," Andrés says, patting her on the shoulder. "it's okay, Martín. Don't worry. Agata has not been a very good guest to our lesson, she doesn't deserve to see your somersault any more." 

Despite not having been shown how to do a somersault underwater, Martín still looks disappointed at the prospect of not showing off. The pout he puts on is enough proof of that. So, to Andrés's absolute horror, Martín tries it anyway. 

He hears the sound of splashing and Agata's gasp before he realises what's happened. Then, more splashing and flailing is heard unit a singular leg emerges out of the water. _Upside down again then. Great._

He feels Agata lean forward, as if about to jump in, but Andrés blocks her with his arm. "He's fine. Let's see if the lessons have worked, hm? Core strength, Martín!" 

"Are you fucking insane? He's going to drown!" Agata exclaims, pushing his arm away and standing, unzipping her jacket. He sees her bend at the knees in preparation for a dive when Martín's head bursts back into the air. He doesn't even cough this time. Impressive. The man is learning! 

"Martín!" Agata exclaims, dropping the arms which had instinctively outstretched to meet the water. "Are you okay?" 

"He's fine." Andrés says, waving it off. Agata doesn't seem satisfied, and gives Andrés a little kick to his side as she repeats her question. 

"I am fine, actually," Martín says, running a hand through his hair. "it's just balance, just physics." 

"Good," Andrés says with a curt little nod. "now, this time, keep your legs closer to your chest. Put your hands under your knees and turn yourself into a little ball." He puts his hands to the underside of his own knees to demonstrate, and then gives him a little wave, as if to say _go on, then._ Martín starts to prepare himself, reaching towards his knees when Agata speaks again. 

"Um, that is not happening." she says firmly, arms crossed. Her natural state. 

"Why not?" Andrés asks, looking up towards her with a turn of his head, painting a dovishly innocent smile on his face. "the man's a quick learner. He'll get it right this time."

Agata narrows her eyes, in the exact way she used to just before she would let him do what he wanted. Andrés takes that as permission and gives Martín a nod. 

Of course Martín does it right. He hasn't disappointed him yet. 

"Right," Agata says. "that was less life-threatening. You can check that off of your lesson plan, Andrés."

"Can I actually swim now, Andrés? Please?"

Agata gives Andrés a look. He doesn't really know how to read it. "Go for it, Martín." She says with a shrug. 

"Well, how do I-?"

Agata huffs and strides to the corner of the pool, where she retrieves a flat foam float and passes it to Martín. "Hold that and kick." 

Martín beams at her, settles his grip on the float, and stretches his arms out and starts to kick. He moves along slowly. Once he realises he isn't in the same spot he was before, a beautiful little chuckle erupts out of him. It's delightful. He seems satisfied, and kicks with more fervour, splashing all over the place. Terrible form, really, and Andrés makes a note in his head to dedicate a lesson just to proper leg kicking. He feels happier already at the idea of another lesson. 

He can't take his eyes off of Martín as he aimlessly kicks himself around the water in looping patterns. He doesn't even notice Agata sitting back down next to him until she speaks again. 

"I actually did come here to speak to you, you know." 

"You could have called." Andrés points out, fairly, he thinks, as Martín swims past them, droplets from his vigorous kicking meeting Andrés's face. Like rain. 

"Not really a phone call conversation." Agata replies, wiping her forehead dry, which proves to be a futile effort as Martín does it again only minutes later. 

"And how did you know I'd be here?" He asks, because he's genuinely interested. He doesn't think himself predictable. 

"This is my pool, Andrés. My centre. There's CCTV." 

_Oh._

"Well, seems like you need to get a new hobby," Andrés drawls out in an attempt to seem unbothered. "watching me teach him to swim must be boring compared to telenovelas I remember you being fond of." 

Agata's laugh surprises him. "Don't play that game with me, Andrés. _Querido,_ I know about you and the water. I see you trying to get in while he's in the shower."

_Ah._

He's about to make some attempt of defence, which seems ridiculous since Agata isn't attacking him. He can feel her eyes on him, soft. Caring. Nice. No harm. 

"If you need help, I can help." She says. 

Andrés swallows, turns his attention back to Martín who gives him a little wave as he swims past with a smile so wide it's infectious. As he lifts his hand to wave, he seems to threaten his balance, and splashes a bit before laughing and continuing to swim. 

Andrés tries to find the words to respond to her, but each one dives off of his tongue and into the water, performing flips and tricks as they do so. 

"I know I won't swim competitively again, I'm thirty-nine now. I'm too old-no, I am!" Andrés says, more insistent as he hears her start to protest. "The water...It's just something that I need to overcome. It'll be fine." It sounds unbelievable to even his own ears, but the water dancing around his knees reminds him of the barriers he's overcome already. What he's already achieved. 

"You lied to me," she says, giving Martín a salute as he passes again. "you did swim that night. The first night. Your form was awful, I mean truly awful, but you did swim, Andrés." 

"That was diff-"

"It wasn't different and you know that," she says, firmer, and he's inclined for a moment to believe her. "the offer stands, okay? But that wasn't why I came either. I have a proposition for you." 

That doesn't sound good. 

"So you might not want to swim again. That's fine. It makes no difference to me. I have the centre, I have the kids classes, I have that stupid husband of mine, I have a lot of stuff going on," Andrés scoffs at the mention of her husband, wondering how the man who never could shift the nickname of Bogota was these days. "That said, I miss coaching. Like _really_ coaching. I had a few teenagers at the centre that showed promise, but their hearts aren't in it." 

Andrés feels a mild level of panic establish itself within him as he tries to figure out where she's going with this. He knows that he has a tendency to embellish as he speaks, but this feels like a sweet form of torture. Luckily, her lips lift in a smile that indicates the punchline's on it's way. 

"I have two tickets to a swim meet at the university. I want to scout someone. Will you come?" 

"I can't be a coach." Is what he says, because it feels like the sensible thing to say. The truthful thing to say. 

"Oh god, no!" Agata howls, throwing her head back in laughter. She slaps him lightly on the arm as she regains her breath. "you might be the worst swimming teacher I have ever seen." 

"I think he's good." Martín says like the angel he is. During their conversation, he's managed to get himself out of the pool and begun the process of drying off with a pink towel. All the kicking must have tired the poor thing out. 

"You _could_ be good," Agata clarifies. She stands. "I'm asking you if you'd like to be my assistant. To learn how to coach. It's different from teaching, which you are royally shit at."

He narrows his eyes at her, trying not to read too far into the feeling that reminds him of excitement bubbling up from his stomach.

"And in return?" Is what he says next, because he's ultimately selfish by nature.

"Maybe I help you teach Martín." 

He wants to say, _no, please leave us, let us do this alone._ Instead, what comes out of his mouth is, "Martín?" 

Martín shrugs. "I like Andrés's teaching methods." It can't be true, he thinks. He feels like laughing and accepting his fate as an awful teacher after seeing the sinful wink that Martín sends him. 

"Alright. Well, let me know," Agata says, looking down at Andrés with another unreadable look. "and I'll see you at two on Friday? You can pick me up in the Figaro." 

"I will not be picking you up in the Figaro." Andrés retorts, scooping up water and throwing it at her. She leaps back and laughs. It's a wonderful thing. Feels normal. Feels good. 

"I will see you, and the Figaro, on Friday," she confirms, walking towards the exit. She kisses Martín at his temple on her way past. "You, I will see on Thursday. I can't wait to hear all about your date." 

He barely has time to process the thought of ' _date?'_ that flashes across his mind before Martín is speaking, offering his hand to help Andrés stand. 

"It did make me think, though, as you were speaking," is what Martín is saying when Andrés zones back in. "that you don't get much out of this arrangement." 

If only he knew. If only he knew just how much Andrés was getting out of this arrangement. 

"Is there anything I can teach you? I mean, you might not have a need for engineering knowledge, so that's a no," Martín says, and Andrés can't help but imagining what those lessons would be like. "I've got it. I can teach you how to dance! Your rhythm in the club was much to be desired." 

"I know how to dance." And it's true, but at the sight of Martín's face falling in disappointment, he realises what he's just denied. He's just denied another opportunity to meet up with Martín! A scheduled time where they both have to be there. It's nothing more than Martín's aura, something within it that is healing, restorative. It doesn't escape Andrés that he could equally invite the man to meet outside of the lessons, but sometimes sense escapes him. A fatal flaw.

He stutters and sputters as he panics to salvage this. "What I mean is, what might be better...I think I might know someone who might need dancing lessons more than me." 

"No."

Sergio voice is final and firm, and Andrés has to use a lot of effort to hold in the laugh that wants to escape at the sight of Sergio not even daring to look up from his computer. It's been a while since he's been in Sergio's office, let alone his house, and he wonders what Raquel had to do to convince him to repaint the walls. He doesn't miss the chartreuse at all. 

"Little brother, please," Sergio's head looks up at that. A 'please'. Andrés is aware it's a rare occurrence. He doesn't intend to use the word again for the next four to five working days. At least. "think of it as a present to me, a present that I am giving to you." 

"I don't need dancing lessons, Andrés. Aunt Sylvia made sure of that on your eight birthday." Sergio says, his eyes desperate to turn back to his computer. 

"Just think how surprised Raquel would be on your wedding day if you start showing off some salsa knowledge! Think of the romance, Sergio!" 

"No."

"The romance!"

"Which part of the word 'no' is confusing you right now?" 

"The romance, Sergio, the romance! Think of Raquel, in her wedding dress, her little face as you announce that you know how to tango! That you learned it for her." 

"I will attend one lesson." 

"Great!" Andrés yelps, letting out a little breath of relief. "It's settled. You will learn to dance."

"And how exactly do you fit into this, Andrés?"

Yes. Good question, Sergio.

"You will learn to dance, and I will...drive you there! Your car is still broken, no?"

"It's actually been fixed for weeks now, Andrés."

"Well, then. How about we pretend that it's still broken, hm?" 


	9. Chapter 9

As he pulls up in front of Agata's house, it occurs to Andrés that he might be underprepared. Agata stumbles out of the front door, bags slung over each shoulder, arms cradling bound folders. He leans over to open the passenger door for her, and she pushes it open the rest of the way with her hip. She arranges the bags onto her lap, and holds her hand up to stop him from pulling away just as he reaches for the handbrake. Under her breath, she counts through a mental list of things to bring, nodding after rummaging through each bag, and then- 

"Fuck! My phone!" She pats herself down, checking her pockets for the missing phone before turning her head to Andrés. "Andrés, could you just go back into my house and get it? It's gotta be on the kitchen counter." 

"Do I-"

"Come on! I'm buried under these bags. It's not my fault your trunk is the size of a shoebox." Before he can retort that it was her that requested he bring this car, let alone drive, he unlocks his seatbelt and exits the car. Approaching the front door, he spares one look to her. It feels odd to just enter her house, but she waves him on, impatiently at that. 

He tries to think about the last time he'd been in Agata's house, attending one of her famous dinner parties, or having an impromptu strategy meeting. The dinner parties in particular were always a favourite, wondering who had been invited from the top of the sporting elite this time to blend with the usual crowd of Agata's friends. He was never quite sure which he'd fallen into. He wonders who'd sat in his chair while he was gone. 

He heads towards the kitchen to see Bogota, looking exactly the same as when he'd last seen him five years ago, eating frantically at the counter. 

"Andrés?" He says, but the words get lost around all of the food in his mouth. He looks panicked, as if he'd been caught murdering a man, not eating cookies. 

"I just came in to get her phone," Andrés says in response, picking up the phone in evidence. He doesn't know what else to say to the man, who makes an effort to swallow, coughs and stares at him. "I've got it now, so..."

"Agata said she was going to take you with her today," the other man says, probably to help himself understand Andrés's presence in his house. "It's good to see you."

Andrés can only bring himself to nod. It's not that they hadn't been friends before, because it also wasn't exactly like Andrés had surrounded himself with a sea of disciples before the accident, but Bogota had always been good to him. They'd trained alongside each other under Agata, together a half of their Olympic winning relay team. He'd always help to talk Agata down and help convince her to let Andrés do what he wanted. Bogota had always taken Andrés's side, the right side. Then he'd gotten married to Agata, gave up on swimming (citing the only reason as being 'boring, I guess'), becoming useful only for smuggling Andrés extra dessert at the dinner parties. So, maybe a friend, then. 

Bogota seems to understand he won't be getting a reply, so he eats another cookie. Out of generosity or sheer awkwardness, he offers Andrés one. Andrés stares at it for a second too long, but takes it anyway. It's an exceptional cookie. 

"Yeah, I know," Bogota agrees, arranging the ones remaining on the plate so that it only looks like one or two had been taken. "she's got this new cookbook. If she asks you, you have to tell her I wasn't eating, okay?"

"She's got you on an Olympic diet again, then?"

"It's not far off, actually," Bogota chuckles. Andrés wonders what he's done with himself since quitting swimming. Andrés had done another Olympics after Bogota had quit, and is starting to see the end of the swimming money five years later. He knows he's got to do somethign. He'd kill himself before selling one of the cars. "It's this ovulation regime she's got going on. There's a calendar, Andrés! I just want to have sex when I want to have sex." 

He can't seem to bring himself to feel that bad for the man. His bed has been empty for a long time. 

He's about to ask him what he does now when he hears the horn from his own car. Agata. 

"That's my cue." he says, giving Bogota a small nod as he retreats out of the kitchen. 

"It was nice to see you, Andrés," Bogota says, and it sounds like he actually means it. "Stop by again, okay?" 

He nods, and shuts the door behind him. 

Agata doesn't look particularly happy, and looks positively livid when Andrés sits down and lightly throws her phone at her. 

"Did you see Bogota?" 

Andrés nods with a light hum as he pulls his seatbelt across. Again.

"Was he eating?"

"No." 

He begins to drive. He knows the way, has no issues concentrating while driving, but still wills Agata to not disrupt him. He just knows that if she speaks again, it will be the beginning of a conversation he just won't want to partake in. 

"So, shall we speak about Martín?"

Bingo. 

He groans. "Say whatever you've been dying to say now. We've got an hour's drive ahead of us." 

He wonders what she's got to say, what warning she's going to give him, what she's going to advise him against saying or doing. 

"No!" she says, her hand grabbing his arm in earnest, "I was just going to say, I think it's really nice that you've become friends." 

"Oh." He says, not realising he'd spoken. 

"I mean, knowing you separately, and then seeing you together yesterday...I was just surprised, I guess. A good surprise."

He stays silent. Not to elicit more out of her, not to appear mysterious, but because he simply doesn't know how to respond to that. Luckily, Agata isn't deterred, and continues to speak. 

"He'll be good for you. He's...We've all missed you, you know. So muc-"

"Right, that's enough of that." 

Agata just laughs.

"Okay, that was our two minutes of serious conversation," she mimes a little tick with her finger, then opens one of the binders in her lap. "Right so, I always do some research on the swimmers before I go to a meet, look at recent stats, their histories, that kind of thing. I've got a list of swimmers I'm interested in already, but need to see them in action." 

That all makes enough sense, Andrés thinks, and he takes a peek at her open binder to see highlighted and circled numbers on a graph, annotated angrily in pink ink. "So what am I watching for?" 

"General performance," Agata starts, and Andrés can't stop himself from scoffing. "shut up! Technique, the alignment of their bodies, speed, good habits and bad habits. I'm also watching them on the poolside. Are they nice to people? Are they a sore loser? I won't be working with anyone difficult."

"Am I not difficult?"

"Oh absolutely, you are such a pain in my ass, especially when you were on hiatus," Agata says softly, but Andrés still winces anyway. "you are so lucky that I had to coach you, because I would never have chosen to." 

"Is that right?" 

He remembers well the days when Agata trained alongside him, how they were the rising stars of their centre, both getting invites from coaches, from managers, getting sponsorships. They had a (healthy) rivalry, choosing often to swim against each other rather than against their own genders. That was, until Agata broke her wrist. Just as they were preparing to qualify for their first championships, it had all been taken away from Agata in her prime. She'd had to watch him get all the attention that she was supposed to be basking in. Jealousy didn't suit her, but he'd understood. Combined with the absolute hatred he'd had for all of the coaches bidding for him, at the grand age of nineteen, he'd asked her to be his coach, and for Sergio to be his manager. It had all worked out alright, for a while. It looked like it had continued to work for her, at least. 

When they return to the car hours later, they're somehow carrying even more paper. Once settled back in the car, Andrés starts the engine. They look at each other, silent. They both break into smiles. Agata grabs Andrés's cheeks and shakes him, beaming. 

"I'm bringing you with me more often!"

"I was just there. You sealed the deals."

"I didn't even think about the fact that you'd have name recognition! Every swimmer wanted to speak to us, just because you were there, just to thank you for inspiring them." 

It had been nice to have the young swimmers parade around him like that. Really nice. Nice, and exhausting. It's barely even five, but he is certainly ready to return to bed. Too much social interaction. Too much of the swimmers asking him what he's been up to, what he's doing next. 

"The kid's nice. Nice technique, too. His breath stroke needs work, but that's something you can fix, at least. The guy in lane four...you'd need years to sort out his feet." 

Agata's staring at him. He doesn't know what he's said. The kid, Aníbal Cortés, eighteen, certainly had a lot of talent, just like Agata had predicted. 

"Do you want to come to the contract meeting?" 

"You'll need a manager for the kid if you.... _oh._ " 

He has a horrible feeling he's been set up. 

"Sergio?"

Agata just hums. 

The day that those around him stop intervening in his life, he wonders whether he'll be better off or worse. He's secretly thankful for whatever plot they've cooked up. 

He starts to drive. The two of them talk the whole way home, Agata catching him up on all of the gossip he'd missed, which seemed a futile effort, but he was particularly scandalised to hear that Denver had eloped and now has a kid. He tells her sincerely that he's missed working with her, and just generally being around her. It's a good balance, he decides. 

After he drops her off, he drives home slowly, decompressing. Watching the swimming was not as traumatic as expected, and he actually found himself getting really into it, once he knew what to look for. By the third race, he was despairing at the neck alignment of one of the swimmers, so loudly that he offended said swimmer's parents, who had managed to sit conveniently behind them. Agata had just laughed and told him he'd been right. Maybe this could be the next step for him, he'd enjoyed watching, and when he thinks about it, he's content when he watches Martín. The idea of the actual coaching frightens him, fully aware that he's not the best teacher. It also seems impossible to get back into the industry now. There's too much history, surely. Something will go wrong again. His health will take a downturn or something. Maybe he'll push the kid too far and he'll injure himself. He can't stomach the thought of being the reason someone else goes through what he did. By the time he's pulled into his driveway, he's already talked himself out of it twice.

He sees Sergio leaning against the arch of the front door, looking slightly agitated. Andrés suddenly remembers he'd arranged the first dance lesson for today, at his house, at... _twenty minutes ago. Ah._

He prepares himself for whatever rant he's earned from Sergio, still uneasy about the whole coaching affair, which seems ridiculous of course, he's only been to one event! He can feel his breathing quicken, it's too much. His skin goes colder, and as he unlocks his seatbelt, he looks down at his legs, wondering if they're going to betray him. He exits the car, and sees the other person in front of the door. Martín.

It all goes away when Martín turns around, meets his eyes, and sends him a crooked smile. 

"What time do you call this, Andrés?" It's light, non-accusing, and even if it was, Andrés wouldn't have been able to bring himself to care. 

"Time to dance! Come on, you're both late." He says, opening the front door with a wink. 

Sergio tries to protest, because of course he does, but enters without making a comment. Martín, however, shakes his head, nudges Andrés's shoulder on his way in and says something along the lines of "A multi-talented man, but no punctuality! I am horrified, Andrés. I have to terminate our association immediately."

He's about to volley back to him, smile wide, when he sees Sergio staring at them with something unreadable on his face. His lips pressed into a thin line, he takes off his coat, as if unsure whether to speak or not. Andrés hopes he doesn't speak. Anything he says will surely ruin the moment. 

"Right, teacher, you are here to teach my dear brother here how to dance. You see, he is getting married at the end of the year...I know! Someone to finally take him off my hands. It might take one lesson, it might take one hundred lessons, you'll be the judge of that, dear Martín. Sergio has the rhythm and dance sensibility of a slug. Please take pity on us, and help this poor soul."

Martín's laugh is delicious. 

"Alright...Sergio, do you know what kind of music you'll be dancing to?" 

The sight of a thought Sergio hadn't accounted for is always a nice thing, but it's even nicer today, getting to share it with Martín, who laughs again and grabs Sergio by the shoulders. "It's alright, Sergio. I've brought a CD or two, let's see what you like best. Or maybe more what you can actually dance to, hm?"

A laugh ruptures through Andrés this time, and he lets it. Sergio looks horrified. 

Martín runs back out to the car to retrieve said CD, and it takes all of three seconds for Sergio to turn to Andrés and give him the rant he's been suppressing. 

"What exactly is happening here?" 

"You are learning to dance, dear brother, please keep up." 

"No-no, that's not it. You. What's going on with you? You're mean again. Sarcastic, sarky, showing off." 

It's the nicest thing Sergio's said to him in years. 

His mind instantly goes to Martín, knows that it's him that's brought this familiar, comfortable side to him back out. Another thing to thank the man for, not that he'd ever stop him and say 'hey, thanks for making me me again' 

"Do you not like it, Sergio? Suits me, no?"

Sergio says 'no', but Andrés can see him hiding a smile. 

"What was Cortés like?" 

Andrés stifles a laugh. Sergio's a lot of things, but he's not covert or delicate.

"Good," Andrés says. "lots of promise." 

Martín returns, CD between his fingers. 

"Before I turn the music on, I'd better show you the appropriate stance," Martín says, putting the CD in the player. He turns to Andrés, and he suddenly feels unreasonably nervous. "Andrés? Would you?"

He lets Martín mould him into position, lets him lift his arms and snakes an arm around his waist. His touch is so delicate, but so safe, so secure. His fingertips loop across their joined hands, and Andrés wasn't sure how he thought Martín's hands would feel, but it wasn't like that. His head's turned to Sergio the whole time, explaining the proper technique at each moment, his face alight with passion. Andrés can't stop looking at him. He's radiating, his excitement infectious. 

When Martín lets go of him to show Sergio, it takes a moment for Andrés to realise. He drops his arms sharply. 

"Andrés?" Martín calls over, his smile stretching further as he looks over his shoulder at him. "Would you turn the music on? It's tango time." 


	10. Chapter 10

It takes the same month for Sergio to learn the tango, and for Martín to learn how to do front crawl.

In that time, Andrés finds himself struck by a fascination he has for the way that Martín moves. It's enthralling. The man when dancing appears to have hips made of liquid gold, constantly moving, never still, as if painting into the air with every swish and turn. His hands are somehow more expressive than his face. Andrés has to really concentrate to stop himself from staring at the man's fingers, which morph from pointing into fists, and then explode to show his palms in milliseconds. Andrés is convinced the man is made entirely of a different substance. 

But when he swims, he has the coordination of a broken bicycle. For a reason he can't quite settle on, Andrés is secretly thrilled. 

He still hasn't been able to get any more of himself into the pool than his knees, but at the very least, he doesn't feel filled with panic when he slips his legs in. He doesn't have the capacity to feel anything other than joy, when watching Martín try to move his arms and legs at the same time. 

"Martín," he calls, and Martín obediently stops whatever he was attempting to pass off as swimming. "your arms aren't supposed to be doing this. They're supposed to be doing _this."_ Andrés demonstrates both what Martín was doing and what he should be doing, exaggerating far more than necessary to show the difference. 

The little shit has the audacity to say, "They look the same." 

Andrés wants to leap into the pool and throttle him. Part of him wonders what would happen if he just slid off the edge and plunged in. How it would feel. What Martín would think. What his face would look like when he swims over to him and splashes him as punishment. Still, he stays where he is. 

"They do not look the same," Andrés scoffs, reaching for a float and throwing it towards Martín. "Show me just the legs." 

Martín rolls his eyes, but retrieves the float all the same, kicking elegantly all around the pool just to show off. He splashes less when he kicks now, realising that he moves faster if his legs remain underwater. Andrés watches the legs eclipse each other and then separate, and then watches as it happens again, and again. Yeah, the man can kick alright. 

Martín stops in front of where Andrés is sat on the edge of the pool and looks up at him, wiping wet hair off his forehead. "It's the arms, it's doing it at the same time." 

Andrés nods in agreement. "Copy me." He says, and Martín sets his shoulders, casts the float aside and watches him in anticipation. 

He raises his right arm slowly, halting when it reaches chest level. He waits for Martín to do the same, then raises it above his head, and begins to send it behind his head as he raises his left arm to perform the same circle, just a little bit later than the right arm. He watches Martín, who is keeping up perfectly. They are going at an excruciating pace, but as he quickens it ever so slightly, it's worth it to see that Martín remains in time. He adds the twisting of the head that has to be done to aid breathing, and Martín's following along so well. They continue, eyes on each other, almost transfixed, until the pace is fit for the water. 

Andrés is just about to smile and tell him to try it altogether when he feels it. He freezes and drops his arms immediately. On the underside of his upper left arm, a twinge. The tiniest of sensations, the smallest of feelings, but it's there. He knows that feeling well. A muscle, seizing. _Not good._ He pulls himself out of the water, stung, looking at the water, at Martín (who just stares at him, clueless) as if they've betrayed him. 

He's running a towel across his feet when Martín climbs out of the pool and rushes over to him, clasping his shoulders. It takes everything in Andrés not to flinch, but he does stiffen slightly. He knows that Martín notices, how could he not when he's holding him that tightly?

"Hey, hey, hey," Martín says frantically, crouching to meet Andrés's avoiding gaze. "What's going on? Are you okay?" 

He wants to scream, to shout, to tell him everything. There's been so many occasions where all that's been on the end of his tongue is 'I have a degenerative muscular disease', but he always closes his mouth instead. It feels so odd to not share that part of himself with Martín, when it so often feels like Martín can see into his soul anyway. He wonders if he knows, wonders if he became so curious one day that he demanded that Agata told him. 

He chokes out a very unconvincing "I'm fine" and Martín laughs softly.

"Really?" He says, cocking his head ever so slightly and raising his eyebrow. His hands have still not left Andrés's shoulders, and he's so grateful. It's grounding him, stopping him from slipping into panic. 

"Yes." He lies.

Martín still remains unconvinced, staring him down, daring him to confess. He wants to, it's so tempting. There seems like no tangible reasons against telling him, but his lips remain together. 

It's not uncommon for him to get pains like that, the treatment ensuring that it's at least manageable now. He knows exactly where the pains typically occur, so it's all no surprise, but he never wanted to have that happen in front of Martín. Doesn't want to be seen as weak, feeble. He's not weak. He knows that. 

It's just a reminder that his body has a certain power over him, one that he can't control. 

Well, that simply won't do. 

He stands, lifting the hands on his shoulders to the protest of Martín as he walks straight past him. If Martín calls after him, he doesn't hear it. He knows what he's about to do.

The first thing he feels is the legs of his trousers becoming saturated with water and sticking to his legs before bellowing out and floating around him as he takes another step. And then another. He has to put real effort into releasing his hand from the hand rail as he takes the last step. His jacket feels heavy around him, lifted off his back like a cape. He lifts his arms and uses them to pull him forward through the water. His legs raise and he moves one up, and then down, testing it. He begins to kick, the technique horrendous by any of his own standards, his arms not even performing a proper stroke, but he's moving through the water. He's swimming. 

His mind returns to him only once he's in the middle of the pool. It feels bigger now somehow. He pauses, places his feet down and looks behind him. Martín's right behind him. His face is unreadable. 

Martín stares at him for a moment before the corners of his mouth lift fondly and he asks, "Why did you get into the pool with a suit on?"

For a moment, Andrés really isn't sure why he did it. To prove something (to who?), to end the fear once and for all, to show off, to ruin a suit he likes? The only thought that occupies his mind at present is the fact that he did it nonetheless. 

He opens his mouth to respond, but a laugh is what comes out instead. Martín seems relieved, and appears to let himself laugh too. It is funny after all, he's in a swimming pool, standing right in the middle of it, with a suit on. And to top it all off, he hasn't been in a pool for....

They keep laughing. Their laughters seem to harmonise, to wrap around each other and to reverberate across the pool. At the height of his illness, Andrés was once informed by one particularly indignant doctor that laughter was healing and that he 'should try it more'. He'd instantly demanded a new doctor, but there is something rather healing, calming, restorative about meeting Martín's laughs in the middle. 

Martín's laughter trails off, his smile unfaded. 

"Something just happened there, didn't it?" Martín asks, and so delicately too. Andrés can almost hear him thinking before he speaks, testing the order of his next words. "You've just been through something, haven't you?" 

"Yes." He says, because it's the only word he can bite out. He's consumed by this moment, the achievement of it all, the sensation of Martín being this close to him, in the water, of being safe. Of the details screaming at him - it makes no sense why he should watch a droplet run down Martín's entire face, but he does anyway. He wants to stay in this moment forever. He wants to commit it to memory, to paint it, to write poetry of the way Martín's eyes are shining at him, staring at him all proud. 

"That's good."

"Thank you, Martín."

"Andrés?"

"Yes?"

Martín doesn't speak again. A silence falls between them. He's suddenly aware of them being even closer, if it was even possible. He can feel the heat of Martín's breath on his own lips, can feel it in his mouth and throat as he claims it as his own air. He can't see Martín's eyes, he's too busy looking at his lips, how they seem to twitch slightly, anticipating. Anticipating something. 

A terrible, delightful little thought occurs to him. They're about to kiss, aren't they?

Oddly, the thought doesn't panic him, or at least not in the way it should. He's wondered, once or twice (maybe more if he's feeling particularly honest) what it would be like to take Sergio's place and be held by Martín as he twirls them around. Wondered whether he'd ease into the touch, melting, or if he'd remain rigid like Sergio who just commits each step to memory and lets go of Martín promptly each time the song is over. He's aware of the affect that Martín has on him. He smiles more, lets himself laugh in public, let alone the fact that he even goes into public with Martín. In a world he once thought was dark and over for him, Martín has offered him light and a 'see you tomorrow?'.

He always thought that was where the line stopped. Martín's a good friend to him, the best he's ever had the pleasure of having. And yet, there's this something, this something which dances between their lips, connecting them.

He'd put the _something_ down to the fact that he hasn't had a friend in a while. That he hasn't met anyone new in a while, that he hasn't met any women for a while. He'll have to make a new friend to test the hypothesis. It's surely not logical to be this okay, this fine, this excited about the prospect of your best friend's lips on yours. Surely. 

He used to hate the moment before a kiss. Thought it was pointless, especially when you knew you were about to kiss someone. He preferred to joust grab the woman and say everything instead with his lips against hers. Now? This moment, where they teeter on the edge, the boundary between keeping everything the same and changing everything, the line between friends and something more. He knows it's going to happen, he's resigned his mind to that fact. He knows they're going to kiss, so he allows himself to enjoy this final moment before it's all altered, this moment where Martín seems so nervous, so unsure, his hands itching to take hold of Andrés. One of his hands settle on the back of his neck, firm. The other finds Andrés's wrist, his fingertips barely skimming the skin. 

For a moment, he wonders whether Martín is going to do anything at all. But then, he leans forward, and it's only centimetres, because they were so close before, and their bottom lips brush.

Andrés pulls back and regrets it instantly. 

He hadn't felt panicked, in fact he'd felt so serene, so calm, which is odd considering he's standing in a pool with his clothes sodden, hanging off him. 

The words "We'd better go, Sergio gets very upset with tardiness" fall out of his mouth in what feels like panic. He wants to scream at himself. He's not panicking, not all, not even one bit. Okay, maybe a little bit. 

Something twists inside of him as he watches Martín laugh before his face falls, apparently thinking Andrés had been joking. He shakes his head minutely before saying. "Yeah, you're probably right. I've got some spare clothes in my bag." 

He doesn't know how to explain to Martín that he always keeps a spare suit in the back of his car, so he accepts the clothes once they're out of the water. 

In the car, he curses himself. He knows, in his bones, that he's ruined everything. The silence between their seats feels very different to the silence they shared in the water. He wonders how easy it would be to make another friend, wonders how many other janitors he could frighten, how many other space club teachers he could persuade to learn how to swim, how many other Martíns exist. He answers his own question almost automatically. He knows there isn't another. He's got to salvage this somehow. 

He starts the car, partly because he knows he has the excuse of looking at the road if the conversation gets sticky. Beginning to drive, he thinks of all of the words to start with, how best to recover the friendship. It feels inevitable that he has to let Martín down. He can understand the attraction, knows that he hasn't exactly dissuaded it, but he might have to sever it. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but Martín's already speaking, words of 'sorry' and 'I really didn't mean to-'

He shushes him, more severely than he'd probably intended, but it works nonetheless. "Don't apologise." He says. 

It's frustrating that he doesn't need to look over at Martín to know what his facial expression looks like. When did he learn him so well? Eyes looking down, eyebrows knitted, his lips...

He needs to stop thinking about those lips. 

"Andrés, I-"

He shushes him again for good measure, but softer this time. It gives him a little bit more time to think, too. 

"There's nothing to apologise for. We both got a bit caught up in the moment, hm?"

"Yeah," Martín agrees nervously. Out of the corner of his eye, Andrés can see him scratch the back of his neck. "I don't want you to think I'm going to try anything, I just-" 

It hurts a bit. Especially because he knows he totally entertained it. He knows he'd also leant forward. That he'd looked forward to it. He also knows the electricity he'd felt course through him the moment their lips had met for that brief moment. He also knows that he's still feeling it on his bottom lip now, the vision of Martín, dripping and smiling so close to him, quiet and calm ingrained into his memory. Martín, a man so open and proud with his sexuality, thinks that he's overstepped with his straight friend. And Andrés is totally letting him. He hates himself for it, but he still doesn't correct him.

"We have a beautiful friendship, Martín," he says, and as each word comes out he wants to change it, to say something different, to stop the car and find out what Martín's tongue feels like too. "It would be a shame if-"

"Understood." 

"Martín-"

"It's understood. It's fine. I don't know what came over me, I know you're not..."

"That sounds like another apology. You have nothing to apologise for." 

"Sorry. Shit! I mean- It's okay, alright? Can just we pretend nothing happened?" 

_No._

"Yes." He says. He hears Martín take a small breath and sees him look out the window as he pulls into his driveway. 

"I was thinking of teaching Sergio a waltz or something a little bit more wedding-friendly," Martín tells him, clearly forcing normality back into the car. "He's got the hang of the tango, but I can't exactly see him doing that in front of lots of people."

Andrés hums in agreement. It's probably for the best that he doesn't watch Martín do the tango anymore either. It does weird things to him, like thinking they can kiss, for example. 

"A waltz sounds good," he says neutrally. Then, because sometimes words betray him, the next thing he says is, "I don't know how to waltz." 

He does know how to waltz. Very well. 

"Oh," Martín says, surprised. "Maybe I'll have to teach you as well then."

Martín seems unsure, as if the prospect is dangerous, and Andrés is absolutely convinced it is. Very dangerous, but he does has some investigating to do. Firstly, make a new friend to find out if he's just mixed up the feelings of friendship and... _something else_. Secondly, find a beautiful woman to flirt with, to see if it's just a misplaced feeling of being out of romantic practice. Thirdly, dance with Martín, but that's just because he already misses the feeling of Martín's hands on him. 


	11. Chapter 11

The friend experiment is a disaster. Well, not a disaster as such, but it's inconclusive, which is a disaster. Andrés spends an obscene amount of time trying to make conversation in a supermarket with the fishmonger, who didn't even seem like he was being paid enough to care. He waited at a bus stop for hours, never getting on a bus, just in the hopes that someone exciting would step off and support his hypothesis. No one ever does, no one is as exciting as Martín. It's infuriating. 

He even ambushes Cortés after training one day and says in a way that was not at all menacing or concerning, "We're friends aren't we, Cortés?"

The kid shrugs and says "Sure. I guess." He must see the disappointment on Andrés's face, or must hear the very audible sigh that escapes him, because he then asks "Why?" 

Andrés is already walking away from him and pulling out his phone by that point, stabbing Agata's number into the screen. He did need to call her to update her on the training after all. She'd been unable to make it today, some sort of high-profile coaching event he didn't fancy attending, the woman as busy as ever. 

"Andrés! You will not _believe_ who I am with right now." 

His stomach drops. Her tone does not sound particularly promising. Or if it's promising, it's at least promising some sort of demise for him. 

He wonders if she's with Martín somehow, if he's told her. Wonders how he would have told her, what he would have said. Whether he'd felt Andrés's pulse quicken as he leant forward, if he'd felt anything akin to electricity as their lips had brushed. He tries not to think about it, but he can still imagine Martín sat at Agata's kitchen table, mug in hand, complaining about the man that let him kiss him then pulled away. 

"Hello, Andrés." His ex-wife says, and a part of him is horrifically relieved. 

"Tatiana," He says in acknowledgement. Even though this was a much better outcome than he had imagined, he still doesn't know what to say to the woman. He hasn't seen her for at least four and a half years. "Are you well?" 

"Yes, thank you," she says, her voice still sounding the same. "Are _you_ well?"

He knows the question is weighted differently when she asks it. He knows what she's really asking. He says "Yes" because it is true. His health has been the best he's had it since the incident, and he feels thankful for it too. For a while, after resigning himself to the certainty of death, to then find that his expiration date had extended indefinitely, he was furious. He'd really been ready for death. He'd isolated himself from everyone he knew and had read every book he'd wanted to. Easy. If he'd died, he would have gone quietly, and without fuss. People would have barely noticed. Then the treatment started working. He wasn't dying, or at least not for the foreseeable future. A betrayal. He really struggled to be thankful for the longer life sentence, it felt like cheating, as if he'd taken time that he didn't deserve. Then he'd met Martín, a man who lives his life vivaciously, fast, without regard. A man who's helped him more than he'd ever know. A man that is simply magnetic. He wants to be near him, even now. To have Martín look over at him with a quirked smile and to just communicate through a _look._

He needs to stop thinking about Martín. It's not good practice. He's got his ex-wife on the other end of the phone after all. The most recent woman to have loved him, actually. He can barely remember that time now, can't remember how it had felt when they'd first met. He can barely even remember how it had felt when they'd kissed for the first time, whilst the feeling of Martín still lingers on his lips even now. 

"Good," she says in a tone that sounds sincere, and he actually believes her. There's no bad blood, not on his side at least. He doesn't resent her, not at all. "Agata was just telling me about your little star."

"Oh really? Well, he's definitely picked up front crawl very well, but it did take a while. His coordination was much to be desired. I think it's safe to say he's no longer a danger to himself." 

Her silence on the other end of the line is revolting. He knows instantly what he's done. She'd meant Cortés, hadn't she? He curses the damn kid, not that he did anything other than exist though. 

He offers a laugh as a buffer. Tatiana laughs familiarly, sounds comforted, as if hearing Andrés joke was a good sign of something. 

"Agata was saying he could go championships next year." 

"Probably." He's so relieved that the conversation has moved forward slightly, away from his misstep. The woman is quick, smart, if they'd been face to face, she'd have known instantly. Dangerous.

"Well, let me know, I'll drum up some interest on our side, get an interview or something." It all sounds very generous, and he's inclined to feel suspicious of it. He'd wondered in their years apart whether she'd continued on in the publicity industry, and of course she had. She was, and is, formidable. 

Suddenly Agata's speaking again, clearly having snatched the phone back. "Right, our break's over, okay? Someone's just about to present on qualification guidelines. Snore! I'll try to call you later. You have something to tell me, don't you?" She hangs up without any sense of a farewell, but the phone stays glued to Andrés's ear, frozen. 

_You have something to tell me, don't you?_

The CCTV. 

_Fuck._

He all but runs to the car, hands frantic, not sure what to do first. They grab the steering wheel, grasping tight for some sense of reality. He's upset to find that this is still real life. He's driven to Sergio's before he's even realised it, attacking the door with more force than he'd typically. Paula opens the door and looks up at him with a smile that calms him down a bit. A bit. Only a bit. 

"Andrés!" She says, attaching herself to his legs. "Have you come to play too?" 

"I'm not here to play today, I'm afraid. I'm here to see Sergio." 

Paula huffs a little, but nods, clearly assuming the excuse of 'grown up stuff' must apply here. "They're in the study." 

He ruffles her hair a little for good measure as he closes the door behind him and makes for the study. Sergio will know what to do. Not that Andrés is going to tell him the whole story, though. A partial truth will have to do. What that partial truth is, he's not yet sure, but he's currently hoping it will arrive to him at the appropriate moment. 

He opens the door to find Sergio and Martín sitting across from each other, engrossed in a game of chess. As if this day couldn't get any more horrifying. 

"Sergio." 

"Andrés. What are you doing here?"

"What is Martín doing here?"

"Look, Andrés! I think I'm winning." Martín looks over at him and beckons him over. Andrés hates himself the moment that his hand finds its way to Martín's shoulder, and hates Martín the moment that he feels him relax under the touch. He hates himself again when he feels that he too has relaxed at the contact. 

"He's not winning." Sergio says drily, and Andrés wants to know instantly how long this has been going on (how long have they even been _friends?)_ , and why he hasn't been invited. Not that he's any good at chess though. Sergio always wins. It's boring. 

"I am actually winning. Check." Martín says after moving a knight. 

Sergio's eyebrows raise. He stares at the board for a while, considering it. Martín looks up at him, offers him a smile. It's not that he's been avoiding Martín per se, but he's...yeah, he's been avoiding him. It's been two weeks since the kiss, or whatever that thing was, and under the title of 'not interfering with the experiment', it just made sense to Andrés to not see him. It might affect the results. Martín might affect the results. It would be his fault. 

His hand doesn't move from his shoulder. He likes it there. Sergio's too engrossed in potentially losing at chess that he doesn't even notice. Or, doesn't let on at least. Small mercies. 

Sergio moves a pawn, determined. Martín suppresses a little giggle as he moves his knight again and calls 'checkmate'. 

"No. No way. That can't be right. What about-"

"You've lost, Sergio. For once, you are defeated at chess. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not. Martín here has the best mind the world has to offer. He's bested you, Sergio, accept it."

Sergio is flabbergasted. He flicks his gaze between the chess board and Martín, as if the two shouldn't match. Andrés sneaks his other hand onto Martín's shoulder in celebration, a reward. A reward for _Martín_ , he has to remind himself. 

Martín looks up at him, his expression content, satisfied, but ultimately shared only with Andrés. He looks oddly vulnerable now, even in victory. 

Sergio stands. He looks clearly agitated. He's not a man that likes losing. At all. He turns to Andrés. "What are you here for again?" 

"I came to ask for your help." Andrés says, almost having forgotten in stepping into the most bizarre room of his life. 

"With?" Sergio coaxes, already rearranging the chess pieces, hiding the evidence that he was beaten. Typical. 

He realises quickly that Martín can't know. It would be terribly bad form to say 'ah, yes Martín, that kiss we shared two weeks ago, remember? I need to erase the recorded footage of it before Agata finds it and decides to meddle in any way she sees fit' wouldn't it?

Instead, he says safely, "I need a report that Agata's left in her office. It's locked, and she's on that swimming association seminar thing. She's with Tatiana, by the way."

Sergio's lack of reaction tells him he already knew that fact, and Andrés doesn't possess the energy to deal with _that_ right now. For once, he'd like to be privy to what is going on around him. But for now, he has a bigger issue to navigate. 

"How am I supposed to help you with that?" Sergio asks eventually, rotating one of his chess pieces just so. Of course. 

"Well you need to help me break in, of course!"

"Don't be ridiculous. There's no need to 'break in', as you call it, Andrés. She'll be back on Monday, you can see the report then." 

"Alright," Andrés nods firmly, but then, "theoretically speaking, how would you go about breaking into somewhere like-"

"Are you alright, Andrés? Have you taken your medication?" 

Andrés hates him. He wants to run a hand across the chess board and knock all of the cursed pieces onto the carpet. How _dare_ he. And in front of Martín! He won't be made to look weak in front of Martín, that simply won't do. 

"You need a report in Agata's office?" Martín asks delicately, looking up at him, and Andrés stops glaring at Sergio immediately. 

"Yes, Martín. It's very important. It's for Cortés. I need to review some of his stats."

"The office is always locked, you're right," Martín says, weighing up the information as he speaks it into existence. "What's your experience of picking locks? I haven't done it in a while, I'd need a few paperclips and maybe a pair of scissors." 

"Martín!" Sergio exclaims, surprised. 

"Alright. It's settled. I'll meet you at the pool at nightfall." 

Martín laughs. "Nightfall? What time even is that? Besides, I'm busy tonight." 

"Busy?" Andrés asks, more incredulous than anticipated. "Cancel your plans. This....what's the word?...Heist! This heist is more important." 

He hears Sergio scoff out the word 'heist', but he ignores it. He watches Martín, waiting for his response. 

"I'm sorry, Andrés. If it was now, it would be a different story, but-" 

"No one does a heist in daylight, Martín, that would be ridiculous. You have both disappointed me greatly. I'll do it alone. I'm sure I can learn to pick locks online. You can learn anything online." 

Sergio leads him out. Oddly, he steps out with Andrés and shuts the door behind him. 

"What are you doing, Andrés?"

"What? I'm going home, and I'm _certainly_ not going to break into the swimming centre tonight."

"No," Sergio says, exasperated, probably from the chess match. "With Martín."

Andrés scoffs. 

Sergio seems to take that as some sort of answer. 

"He's fond of you, Andrés. You have fondness for him too, I can see. I'm not blind." 

"People tend to be when they meet me, Sergio. I'm magnanimous."

"No, not in that way."

Andrés knows what he means. Crystal clear. He just doesn't want him to say it. It would only make it worse.

"Andrés, he's in-" 

"I'll leave you to have a rematch. Try not to cry when you lose again." 

He promptly gets into the car. 

When he returns home within thirty minutes, he quickly discovers that it is impossible to learn how to pick locks online, without a lock to test on or any of the implements specified in the tutorial. It's not long before he opens a bottle of wine, deciding that he may as well drink away the embarrassment waiting for him the next time he sees Agata.

It was a futile effort anyway. She's seen it. She knows. The only chance he had was deleting the footage and denying everything. 

He's not sure how he's going to explain it. He might lead with the swimming part, to take some of the scandal away from the kiss. Or, if he leads with the kiss, explains that he was possessed or something, she might just believe it. He raises his second glass to his lips as he accepts his fate. It's all over. 

He's drifting off to sleep on the sofa when his phone starts sounding. Without opening his eyes, he fumbles for the phone and raises it to his ear. 

"Delta Four, this is Delta Three," Martín's voice is nothing short of angelic. "T-minus thirty minutes to the heist. Are you in position?" 

He ignores how his heart soars. 

"I can't drive. I've had some wine." 

"Delta Four, that is no way to prepare for a mission of this calibre." 

"My apologies," he chuckles into the phone. He wonders if it tickles Martín's ear as he hears it on the other side. "Do we have accomplices? Who is Delta One and Two?"

"I don't really know, to be honest. I was trying to play along. My date-my plans have changed. I can pick that lock. I'll drive you?"

Martín's at his door within twenty minutes. As he sits in the passenger seat, he takes in the burgundy silk shirt Martín's wearing. It's positively sinful. He hates it instantly. 

"Sergio-" 

"Whatever he's told you, it's probably true."

"I didn't-" Martín cuts himself off, as if he's decided against what he was going to say previously.

"I like your shirt. It's not very appropriate for the task at hand, though."

"Don't worry, the balaclava is in the trunk," Martín jokes softly. "I had a date. It was..."

"Not good?" He doesn't even know why he's asking, he doesn't care. 

"It was good. Nice. I feel stupid for cutting it short. Anyone else would jump at the chance. It was just...it wasn't exciting, it wasn't electric."

Andrés nods, hums in agreement, the words feeling familiar, recalling the conversation he'd had with his ex-wife earlier in the day. Surely he should have felt something there, right? 

" _This_ is exciting." Martín says definitively. Andrés uses every bit of effort left in his somewhat intoxicated body to not turn to Martín. His tone feels too honest, too dangerous. Risky. 

They enter the centre, thanks to the keys Andrés already has. Andrés's laugh echoes through the whole building as Martín mockingly throws himself to the wall and turns his fingers into a gun, looking furtively over each shoulder as they move through the hallways. They reach Agata's office easily. It's not like there's traps or anything. Only the fact of them being alone together. Andrés remembers what happened last time far too well.

He's ready for Martín to whip out a series of paper clips and other metal sticking devices, but instead pulls out a set of keys. 

"You didn't really think I could pick locks, could you? I thought you were playing along! You know I sometimes clean up here for Agata." 

Andrés is so embarrassed and feels himself flush, but luckily Martín turns to the door and unlocks it, unable to see the shame across his face. He opens the door ceremoniously and turns the light on. 

Andrés steps into the office and quickly panics. Martín can't see him delete the footage. He'll know. 

"You have to guard the door, Martín." 

Martín laughs, but puts his guns up all the same. The light shines off the silk around his chest. He glows slightly. It's outrageous. He turns into the room, letting the door close behind him before he tears the shirt off of him. No shirt should legally be allowed to be that tight. 

It must be the wine. 

He sits at the computer, rewinding the footage to that day. His mouse pointer hovers over the button that would delete the footage of the entire day, and his finger lifts over the clicker, until it falters. 

He watches it. Transfixed. It's like a dance of its own. He's struck by how delicate, how perfect the moment is between them, that it's theirs, in a special, sacred way. He watches himself pull away. Then, and only then, does he click. But it's not the erase button. It's the rewind button. He watches it again. And then again, as if it's going to change, as if this time the little version of him in the screen is going to grab Martín's face and kiss him back with the ferocity and passion he deserves.

He must stop drinking red wine. 

He assesses that he's got another one or two watches before Martín becomes suspicious. He tries to commit the moment to memory, for a reason he doesn't quite understand. It would be nonsensical for him to be attracted to Martín, but then again he was thinking of peeling that cursed shirt off him only moments ago. He's not attracted to Martín. There's just something special about him, and that feeling feels very close to attraction. He's rusty, he's forgotten the feeling. 

He deletes the footage. If he also loads it onto a memory stick, well, call it acquiring evidence of his teaching. 

He pulls a random sheet off of the desk as well, so as to not return empty handed, and opens the door. He holds up the paper in triumph. 

Martín smiles at him, a genuine, lovely, kind smile. He doesn't think he deserves it really. He re-locks the door and leads Andrés back to the car, rambling about how bad a spy he'd be. Andrés can only smile fondly at him as he wanders towards he car. 

They drive home in silence again, and Andrés is convinced that it's a better silence this time. He's not entirely sure why he'd stayed away from him since the kiss, he'd missed this. This companionship, this connection, this bond that they have is unlike anything that Andrés would be able to find in a supermarket or at a bus stop, or anywhere else really. He knows the man next to him is special. He can feel it reverberating off of him. 

"I'm sorry about your date tonight." He says, because he is. He wants the man to be happy. 

"Me too," Martín says with a small laugh. "I really wanted it to be good. My heart just wasn't in it, you know?" 

"Have you ever been in love?" He asks, and he can see out of the corner of his eye Martín's head snap towards him in surprise. Andrés is playing with fire again and he knows it. He doesn't even know why the words came out of him. It must be the wine again. 

"Have you?" He counters back and Andrés laughs. 

"I've been married twice." 

"That's not really an answer, is it?"

"It is," Andrés insists, even though he realises Martín definitely has a point. He'll have to do some thinking on that later when he's less inebriated. "Well? Have you, Martín?" He thinks about his conversation with Sergio earlier. Thinks about that cursed shirt. Thinks about the memory stick in his pocket. 

When Martín says 'no' it sounds an awful lot like a lie. 


	12. Chapter 12

They swim together for the first time on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday evening. It is colossally easier to teach Martín when Andrés is also in the pool, able to physically realign his limbs and watch closer, checking his form, his technique and, well, other parts of him too. He is furious at his face, betraying him, when he sees Martín study him shirtless for the first time. 

And as he teaches Martín the appropriate technique for breath stroke, he's able to teach himself a bit too. He swims alongside Martín, pleasantly surprised at how naturally it returns to him. He curses himself from holding back from this. He's wasted so much time. He thinks about everything and everyone else he's held back from in the years since the incident. Thinks about whether he's doing it right now, as he watches Martín attempt to dive into the water. 

The something between them still lingers. A stubborn little thing. Andrés tries to not attend to it, resolving that ignorance may well drive it out of his consciousness. To no avail as of yet. When he does let himself think about it, he decides that it makes no sense. An attraction, albeit _mild_ and _barely even there_ , (he lets himself call it that now, as Sergio's term of 'fondness' was much, much worse) to Martín, a foul-mouthed Argentinian _man,_ who teaches children about space in his spare time, makes very little sense. Andrés has always been particularly fond of the female form, the curves, the delicacy, the clean, smooth lines, the softness. The male form, Martín's form, is rather different. And his personality! The flamboyance, his outgoing nature, how loud he is, how he says everything with his chest and every other fibre of his being too, well, other than his attraction for Andrés, which Andrés desperately is trying to ignore as well. So yeah, it makes no sense for him to be attracted to Martín, to want to kiss him again, properly this time.

And yet. 

As he watches Martín bounce at the knees, testing the stance, at the edge of the pool, he cannot remove the smile from his own face. He wants nothing more than to wipe the damp hairs off of his face once he resurfaces from the dive and to take his face into his hands. This simply will not do. It would be easier to avoid the man, to not turn up for their lessons, to ignore his calls, to move cities, to disappear without a trace. And yet. The thought of being without Martín is worse, so much worse. He can't have him _in that way_ , it already threatened to sever their association before. He has to keep him right where he is, at a distance that can only be labelled 'a form of sweet torture'. He has to keep him on this boundary, teetering on that line between friends and something potentially either destructive or transformative, it's where they're both safest. Surely. 

Without meeting and befriending Martín, he would never have dreamed of swimming again, would never dreamed of reconnecting with his old friends. They've achieved so much together as friends in only a matter of mere months. It's safer to keep him as a friend. 

It's fear, isn't it? Not a fear of failure, but a fear of succeeding. Will he know what to do? The feeling foreign, how will he know how to navigate the success? The happiness?....Is what he thinks _Martín_ must be feeling as he tries to talk himself into leaping off the ledge and into the water. He's never had such a thought about himself. Ever.

Martín leaps in gracefully, perfectly. Of course he does. He looked past the fear, and thought better of it, knowing that the feeling once he had done it would outweigh the fear, in spades. 

He still has a lot to learn from Martín. 

He drives them back to his house, having somehow recovered the option of having dancing lessons that he _really_ doesn't need. Sergio's wedding venue recently cancelled due to some sort of renovation, and he couldn't have been more eager to drop out of the lessons, citing that when it came closer to the rearranged date ten months away that he _might_ have a refresher. Andrés had delicately requested one night after the swimming that Martín kept his word and showed him the waltz, as returning to the sports industry with Agata had the promise of many galas where dancing was commonplace. A complete lie. He'd only been to one event before where everyone was expected to dance, and even then he'd leant by the bar the whole time drinking obscenely expensive champagne. 

"So the thing with the waltz," Martín starts, removing his jacket casually. _Not a good start._ "Is that it's in three counts. Every move, every step, is to the beats. One, two, three. One, two, three." 

Andrés has to force himself to nod interestedly, remembering that he's supposed to know none of this information. Martín approaches him, takes one of his hands, and so excruciatingly delicately too, and lifts them into the arrangement Andrés is supposed to not be used to. He places his other hand on Andrés's shoulder, and Andrés has to resist swapping their arms, so used to leading. The idea of Martín leading them, taking charge.... 

This must surely be a gargantuan mistake waiting to happen. 

"You know, Andrés, it doesn't really make sense that you don't know how to do this." Martín says after demonstrating a simple waltz step. 

He's right. It is literally is the most feeble, unbelievable lie that Andrés has ever told. 

"Indeed," he agrees in response with a light hum, looking down at the feet that Martín is so patiently explaining to a man that knows exactly what he's doing. "But I was shown the tango and salsa first. I never saw the appeal in learning the waltz." 

Martín thankfully takes that as an acceptable answer, and meets his eyes before saying, "Right. You ready? We're going to dance." His hand tightens around Andrés's, a light little squeeze. Comforting. Tender. 

He tries to focus on the music, on the counts, and even wills his eyes to shut, but he can't seem to leave Martín's gaze. He takes his first step. 

"Andrés!" Martín admonishes with a chuckle. "You aren't leading today, okay? I'm leading. You have to step back first." 

Curse his face for flushing. He can feel the heat on his cheeks, and suddenly Martín's hand feels warmer too. 

It's absurdly romantic. The music, the stance, the hold, the way the warm light of the lamp in the corner of the living room colours Martín's face a glowing golden. 

They dance the waltz for a bit, Andrés throwing a few missteps in for good measure. There's something quite special about the way that Martín tells him off, or how he'll release his hold on Andrés's shoulder, only to grab at his hips, guiding them to be more fluid. His touches are soft, and he doesn't miss how Martín will keep his hold a moment longer than would be strictly necessary. As if he's savouring it, unsure when the next one will be. 

"You've picked this up quite quickly," Martín says, tragically. If he didn't know better, Andrés would think that he's disappointed as well. "shall I teach you how to turn?" 

"Next time." Andrés says softly, somehow desperate to have another night of this committed to memory.

Martín gives a nod that screams relief, and finally releases Andrés. He walks over to the music player and stops the music, leaving the only thing Andrés can hear to be his own breath, irregular, a small form of panting. The waltz hadn't been _that_ strenuous. 

Before he can think of something else to say, he says, "I still feel like dancing." 

He outstretches his arms, mimicking a lazier waltz stance. Martín stares at him. He knows how much danger is promised in those arms, how treacherous the waters will be. Yet, he approaches Andrés, something unreadable on his face. He takes one of the hands and then laughs deeply as an arm, Andrés's arm, snakes around his waist. He yields, this time, and places his free hand on Andrés's shoulder. 

The waltz requires a certain distance between its dancers, arms held upright and between the bodies. This is a bit different. A bit closer, and their chests would be together, and what a concept that would be. 

It shouldn't even really be called dancing, Andrés thinks as they begin to lazily sway together. He thinks about the time they ventured into that club together, and how synonymous their movements were. Even now, Martín, or at least his body, knows what direction they're going next. There's something violently intoxicating about it, addicting. He wants to consume them both. 

They sway together, remaining in place, for what feels like hours. It's horrifically intimate, and incredibly dangerous for them both, but if anything, his hold tightens, forbidding the universe if it were to dare separate them. Martín's intense, wonderful gaze eventually shifts from meeting Andrés's, as his head elects to rest against Andrés's chest. _So much worse._

When he opens his mouth, he doesn't expect to speak, but he does anyway. He suddenly feels a level of vulnerability he's never encountered before. One that's coupled with the certainty, safety, of Martín's hands on him. 

"When I was young, my earliest memories were of my mother slowly becoming less mobile and more sick," he starts, his voice shaking more than he'd like it to. "She couldn't move by the end. She died when Sergio and I were just about to finish school." 

Martín holds him tighter and doesn't say a word. 

"She had this rare degenerative muscular disease, and I'd always feared that Sergio might develop it. He was never very athletic. I was a swimmer, about to go professional, I was safe. I did the Olympics, twice. I was at the peak of my physical fitness. Rich, married, a winner. Then at Rio, 2016, we all flew over, ready to win more medals," he pauses, thankful for once that he can't meet Martín's gaze. It makes it easier. "When we landed in the athlete's village, I saw on my bed, and my leg began to shake. I thought it was nerves, or the flight. I paid little attention to it. On the first day of swimming, I won silver. Sergio was furious, of course. He's the best sporting manager you'll find, you know. He brought Agata over to scold me after the reporters went away, but all I could think about was this tremor in my leg. It had come back halfway across the race, and it was harder to kick, you know? I lost a lot of time in that race, and I didn't know what was happening. I still had three more races to do."

Living that time was hard. Remembering it is harder, but with Martín entwined with him, it's a little bit easier. He wants him to know, to understand him better. He knows so much about Martín. It only feels fair to share this side with him, to share this side with the world a bit more. 

"I went to a physiotherapist and it did nothing. I started to feel a small tremor in my arm. I did two of the races, and made it through okay, won a bronze. Then, finally, it was the relay. Agata always used to laugh when I asked her if I could go first, claiming that third was the most important spot in the relay. Make or break. She was always right, but I think I liked riling her up. So I stood on the sidelines, watching Marseille, and then Bogota swim their laps. We were in silver position, just like Agata always had planned. She loved that movie-style final moment of taking the gold at the last second. So, I'm ready, poised to dive as Bogota is completing his lap, and I bend, about to release, arms outstretched, just like you were doing earlier. And my arm hurts and my leg hurts, and I'm trying my best to ignore it. I release, propelling myself forward. And I fall in, motionless. I couldn't feel a thing, couldn't move at all. I really thought I was going to drown, that they'd all carry on. Then, I heard Sergio shouting, and I was being pulled out."

It's then that Martín pulls back slightly, so that their eyes meet again. His gaze is comfortable, inviting, safe. 

"I had the disease, and it was moving fast. They said I might have a year or so to live." 

"Well, that was wrong, wasn't it?"

Andrés somehow laughs. Bless this man, it's like he has something innate within him telling him the correct thing to say at all times. 

"Yes, it was, Martín," He allows himself to smile, and he's so overwhelmed with the feeling of being _thankful_ that he didn't die. He would never have been able to experience _this._ "Sergio found this experimental treatment, well he found a lot of treatments, actually. But one of them worked, and suddenly I wasn't dying anymore. But the problem was that I then lived for years as if I was dying, as if I was dead. Five years, I lived like a recluse."

"And then you met me." Martín's tone is light, and his smile glows, shines. They continue to sway, and he wills the universe to let the moment play on. 

"And then I met you." He agrees. 

When Martín's hand reaches up to his cheek, holding him there so tenderly, so essentially, critically, Andrés lets him. It seems like there's no other option. 


	13. Chapter 13

Monday. 

On Monday, Martín appears at Andrés's door, equipped with multiple folders and garments folded over his arms. 

He says, "I'm in crisis." in a way that is so overly-dramatic, that Andrés can immediately assess that he is, indeed, not in crisis. Andrés lets him in anyway, without another thought. 

"Crisis, you say?" Andrés drawls out, moving across into the kitchen to fix an appropriate drink for the 'crisis' occasion. It's eleven in the morning, so coffee will have to do. He slides the mug over to Martín, who just clasps his hands around it. 

"Crisis, Andrés. A real crisis." He confirm with a nod. 

"Go on, then." Andrés coaxes. He's more entertained than he is concerned, especially now that there's a tiny little smirk on Martín's lips. 

"Okay," Martín starts, taking a seat in Andrés's favourite armchair. He doesn't feel compelled to eject him from it though, he looks good there. "So, there was this event at the university for alumni, to give, like, a speech? You had to apply, it was going to be a really big deal. So, I made a pitch for a speech that continued some of my work I started in my masters about the history of shaping and design of the fins on spacecraft, and how if they were to be in this curved shape I designed, that the aerodynamics would be optimised, you know?" 

Andrés doesn't 'know'. Not many of the words just spoken made a whole lot of sense to him, but watching Martín go a bit wild with his gestures in his explanation is nothing short of heartwarming. 

"So, did you get a place in the event, then?" 

"No! Not at all. The email they sent me was rather scathing, actually." 

"Right," Andrés says with a stubborn smirk that won't seem to leave his face. "so, what's the crisis, then?" 

"Well, someone that _did_ get a place just had a snowboarding accident in Ypres! I've been asked to speak!"

The smile on Martín's face, the one that he's trying to suppress in favour of coming across more sympathetic about this tragic snowboarder, goes straight into Andrés. He absorbs it, he wants it to be a part of him, to engulf it, to become that wry little smile. He loves that about him. Unashamedly himself, at all times. 

"What's the crisis, Martín?" 

"Well, the event is on Sunday. And I actually never wrote the speech, I thought that I'd just do that once I'd been given a place last month. I just wrote the pitch." 

Against his better judgement, the next thing that comes out of Andrés's mouth is, "How can I help?" 

"I'm glad you asked!" Martín exclaims, standing with a little jump that could only be labelled under the word 'cute'. "because I need help with the speech itself, the outfit choice, and my general stage presence?"

He doesn't quite know how he's qualified to help him with said matters, but he nods all the same.

"Let's start with outfits, shall we?" He says, because it makes sense to get a series of Martín trying on well-fitting shirts out of the way, right?

Martín retrieves the pile of shirts from where he'd flung them onto a table and starts to pull them up by their hangers, putting them against himself. 

"So, this one, is kind of boring, but it looks professional, no?" 

"It's white, which as you say makes it boring, and the quality of it is...questionable. It will look like tissue paper under the lights. Next." 

"Oh, okay!" Martín says, seeming both surprised and delighted at the feedback. Almost as if he likes Andrés savagely rating his wardrobe. He pulls up a shirt with a positively garish floral print next, and whatever face Andrés pulls makes him say, "Yep, okay, that one was a bit of a wild card." and puts it straight back on the table. 

The next series of shirts is just as bad as the first two, and he can see Martín become more frustrated. He clearly just wants to look good for this event, but an apparent lack of style seems to be at odds with that. 

Andrés finally says, "What about that silk one? Why didn't you bring that?" 

"What? It's too flashy, too unprofessional! Why that one?"

He feels himself flush as he answers. "It just looks good on you okay? You look powerful in it," he meets Martín's eyes, then as, just for good measure, his mouth opens and says of its own accord, "beautiful." 

Something passes between them during the subsequent silence. He can't break away from the gaze, won't. 

Martín, still blushing, finally says, "Okay, I'll wear that, then. It's settled. Thank you."

Andrés stands, and dashes upstairs, ignoring the 'where are you going?', and smiling when his hand finally meets the fabric he intended to find. When he returns downstairs, Martín's laid out books and papers, staring down at them, considering them. He looks up over at Andrés as he enters, eyes widening. 

"A blazer?" 

"A blazer." He confirms. A royal blue _velvet_ blazer, to be exact. One that he just knows will look positively delectable with the silk shirt. Not that he's being self indulgent of course. He won't even be at the event, will he? He'll never even see the completed look. At least he'll be able to imagine it. 

Martín reaches for it, running his fingers along the velvet with a wide grin. 

"Will you put it on?"

Martín's grin widens, if it's even possible, and slowly, making an absolute show of it, of course (and it is _torture,_ simply _torture_ ) as he slips each arm into the blazer. 

It looks amazing on him. Bastard. And what's worse? He knows it, parading around the room, posing at every angle. 

"Oh, yes," he groans in a way that Andrés does his absolute best to ignore. He doesn't want to be thinking about it later, after all. That would be terribly bad form, wouldn't it? "I like this. I feel like a real speaker now! Are you seeing this too? I look so good right now."

Andrés presses his lips shut, knowing full well that anything he would say in response would be far too dangerous. 

"Alright, sit down," Martín orders softly, reaching for one of the sheets, not making any effort at all to remove the blazer. Bastard. "I think I'll have to start with the history of aerospace design. It's actually very interesting. The only worry I have is that I only have fifteen minutes to speak. I might not have time to get onto thermodynamic impacts, so I suppose I just hope someone asks about it in the Q and A?" 

Andrés nods. He can see the cogs whirring in his brain, trying to decide what to leave into the speech and what to strategically leave out in the hopes he'll be asked about it. 

Martín looks up from his sheet, preparing himself. "Tell me if this makes sense, okay? Just imagine that you're an academic who knows something about engineering."

"Well, I know that I'll never swim competitively again, so I might as well learn something new," Andrés says, taking a seat, ready for his lecture. "Set your shoulders back a bit, it'll make you look more relaxed."

Martín smiles at him and begins to speak. 

Tuesday. 

Andrés hates hospitals. In all sense of theory, he should be used to them at this point, but he still hates him. A routine check-up, once every quarter, to be poked, prodded, as they test his mobility and general wellbeing. Presently, Andrés is soothing his shoulder after one of the physiotherapists had taken a dislike to him and stretched his arm a bit too far. The man next to him shows him no pity, especially after the ten minutes he spent ranting about the whole ordeal. 

"Sergio?" Andrés says, nudging his side. "Are you even listening? I'm telling you that she just took my arm and _pulled_ it! Pulled it! Or maybe yanked is a better word. She yanked it, Sergio!" 

Sergio doesn't stir, continuing to type out some sort of email on his phone. "Andrés, please." 

He's about to retort, to feign horror at Sergio's absolute lack of care or interest, when his doctor re-enters the room, clutching a folder that has never brought good news. At his last few appointments, there were no folders, and the doctor just waved him off, claiming that nothing had changed and that he could go home happy. The last time he'd seen a folder was when they told him his condition was deteriorating, right before they found the treatment. 

He stiffens. The idea of becoming unwell, of losing control of his body again, scares him. He barely made it through last time. His mind goes to Martín, about how he'd have to tell him, how he'd be unable to swim with him, how they wouldn't be able to dance, how Martín would have to come to his house instead of meeting him outside. He won't become a burden.

He is so occupied with panic that he almost misses the words, "Andrés, I have some _very_ good news for you" come out of the doctor's mouth. 

He stares at the doctor, confusion painted across his face. He wills the man to continue speaking. 

"This is the best that we've seen your mobility in years, you know. We're all really impressed, and surprised too!" 

Sergio looks over at him, a small smile on his face. He looks about as relieved as Andrés feels. 

"For the last years, we've had you at a stable level, thanks to the treatment, but to now see improvement? This is great news, Andrés!"

The doctor looks positively enthused, gesturing to numbers on sheets and explaining the severity of the improvement. Andrés does't really understand, nor does he want to. It's good news, yes, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. As the doctor said, the treatment itself hasn't changed. 

Sergio also seems to be confused about the possibility of improvement, because he promptly asks, "How is that possible if the treatment hasn't changed?"

"We see it normally when there are lifestyle changes in a patient's life. Have you been exercising more?"

"I have been swimming again," Andrés admits coolly. He sees Sergio's head turn to him in surprise out of the corner of his eye and nearly has to suppress a laugh. "But only in the last few weeks." 

"That's great!" The doctor exclaims, far too excited. "We see improvements like this when patients start to take back control, when they start to _live_ again." 

All of that seems a bit too close, a bit too real. The doctor continues to speak. 

"It's normally motivated in patients with job changes, and relocations, but most commonly, we see it when patients fall in love. Has someone new come into your life since we last saw you, Andrés?" 

Sergio chokes. 

"Alright," Andrés says as calmly as he can, "well, thank you for your time. It's good to hear that I am excelling at the whole living thing. If we're done here, I think me and my brother will take our leave." 

He remains silent until they are seated in the car. 

"Not. A. Word." He says evenly. 

Of course Sergio rebels even the simplest of instructions. "Your reaction certainly didn't refute the doctor's hypothesis." 

"I'll swerve us into moving traffic. I won't beg, Sergio, but I would appreciate if you would sense my tone and speak about something else accordingly."

"But-"

"Martín and I are _friends,_ Sergio. Friends! I understand if the concept is foreign to you, but I do not like the insinuation." 

"No one said anything about Martín, Andrés."

He wants to scream. Instead, he stops the car. 

"Get out." He says, not daring to look at his brother.

"Can't you see that you are completely overreacting?"

He starts to drive again, deciding to give Sergio one more chance. He spends the rest of the journey daring Sergio to speak. He's not above forcibly removing him from the car, after all. 

Wednesday. 

It's 3:14 in the afternoon on a Wednesday when Martín calls him. His voice, velvet. 

"Andrés! I have a surprise for you. Come to the swimming pool now. Be ready to swim." 

Before he gets a chance to speak, the phone call is over. With no opportunity to respond, to reject the invitation (not that he would anyway), he feels like he has no other option than to go and see whatever Martín has planned. 

When he enters the pool from the changing rooms, all he sees is a gaggle of kids, Agata, and Martín. In seeing him, Martín rushes over, smile wide and eyes bright. 

"I'm sorry the phone call was a bit abrupt. I wanted to be mysterious."

"Well, it worked. I am intrigued. What are we doing today?" 

"On Monday, you told me you thought you'd never swim competitively again. I thought that maybe we could change that," Martín gestures over to the group of kids, who are getting into individual lanes. "Swimming competitively doesn't have to mean money and medals. It can just be a race, no?"

This man. 

"Oh! There's just one condition," Martín says, lowering his voice. "You have to lose. You can't beat any of the kids. They'll get upset." 

He's about to say something about kids needing character building moments like losing, but the earnestness of Martín's smile stops him in his tracks. He's so violently moved, touched, by this gesture. Martín has done this, arranged this, for _him._ Yet again, he's living in a world where he feels like he owes Martín the world, and then some. 

He lowers himself into the empty lane, returning the high-five that the kid next to him offers. 

He sees Martín put his hands to his mouth, amplifying his voice, as he speaks in a mock-commentator voice. He introduces each swimmer, ending finally with, "In lane eight, the challenger...Andrés!" 

Something about being 'just Andrés', not the Olympian, not anything else, is just _lovely._

Agata counts them all in, and on the 'go!' that she bellows across the pool, they set off. It's excruciating, to stay behind the children, but after the first few strokes, he actually finds himself enjoying it all. He kicks out easily with his legs in a scissoring motion while he moves his arms in a breath stroke, mostly because it's his slowest stroke, and means that he can leisurely swim across the length of the pool. With the lack of time pressure, he forces himself to take notice of each movement, how it feels under the water, and how the water feels in response to the movement. 

He also has time to look above the water to see Martín cheering him on manically. The water's cold, Agata always making sure it's at her 'optimum temperature', but suddenly he feels a lot warmer. 

When he taps the side of the pool to finish, he's met with a cheer. He looks up at Martín, the exhilaration from the not-quite race still coursing through him. Martín beams at him, and he beams back. 

Martín waits for him to exit the pool, before he clasps him at the shoulders, still grinning. When he pulls back, he reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a tiny, plastic toy medal. 

"Everyone gets one for participation." Martín says, cocking his head to point towards where all of the kids are being given a similar medal by Agata. 

Martín lifts his arms, and slowly draws the strap of the medal over Andrés's head. He knows he should look down at the medal, examine it, but he can't. He can't take his eyes away from Martín's. He's stuck in that _thing_ between them again, isn't he? 

"Well done." Martín says, no louder than a whisper. He's so touched. He feels an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. He feels so lucky to know him. It's almost unfair that he made it through this far in his life without him. It's hard to even remember what life was like before Martín fell into a pool and fell into his life. He brought with him colour, and joy, and laughter, and swearing, and -

Andrés loves him. 

Wait, what? 

Thursday. 

Thursday brings Andrés absolute chaos. As they'd left the centre the day before, Agata had reminded them of the dinner party that she'd forgotten to invite them to. 

He's spent the last hour changing his mind about which tie to wear. 

That, and the whole 'I'm in love with Martín' panic that he's been having for the last 24 hours. But he's been trying not to think about that. 

When he finally settles on a tie, and finally pulls up to Agata's house, he forces himself to take a breath. After all, he's expecting to see some familiar faces that he's not seen for a while. 

Agata opens the door, her face thunderous. 

"What part of six o'clock did you not understand?" She says, all the while letting him into the house and happily taking the expensive bottle of wine out of his hands. 

"It's incredibly gauche to start a dinner party at six o'clock. You know that. Besides, I'm fashionably late." He drawls, entering the dining room to see Sergio, Raquel, Martín, Bogota, Tokyo, and that kid, Cortés. It's group he should be safe in. _Should,_ that is, if Tokyo keeps her mouth shut. 

There's one seat available, and it's next to the man that says in a flirtatious drawl 'Yes, fashionably late indeed', a man that has definitely already had a glass of wine (or two), a man that is wearing his velvet blazer (curse him), and, oh yeah, the man he's in love with.

He can't help himself from grazing Martín's shoulder with his hand as he sits down by him. 

It takes all of five seconds for Tokyo to narrow her eyes at him and open her mouth. "Nice of you to show up." 

"Thank you." He says, deciding that he will gift her one instance where he doesn't bite back. One. Sergio, who's sitting on the other side of him, seems to relax a little. A futile effort, as it only takes another few minutes for Tokyo to speak again.

"So you're not dead, then," she says, popping an olive into her mouth, "shame." 

He owes Tokyo a lot. A woman that he's always hated, and always will hate, yes, but he owes her a debt he cannot repay. After that last Olympics, after leaving swimming, it wasn't just his career he'd ended. He'd ended Sergio's too. And he was certainly a better sports manager than Andrés had been a swimmer. Tokyo had heard about the predicament, and had severed her contract with her existing manager. 

He owes her. A lot. Still, he still then says. "A shame indeed. If I knew you were to be in attendance, I might have eaten needles for breakfast rather than an omelette." 

Martín's hand finds his knee. He's making it very difficult to not be in love with. The bastard. 

Agata brings out food at that point, and Tokyo's mouth is thankfully occupied.

He has a nice conversation with Raquel, which is rudely interrupted once Tokyo finishes her main course. 

"I saw Tatiana yesterday." 

He sighs and looks over at her. He can't even attend a civil dinner party and pretend that he's not in love with the man sitting next to him.

"Bogota, did you make the vinaigrette for the salad? It is positively delightful." He says instead, certain that he's being too graceful with Tokyo, she deserves his full wrath. Bogota shrugs, his face too full with food to deliver a legible response. 

"Did you hear me?" Tokyo pokes, sipping more wine. 

"I did," Andrés says politely, as if she'd instead asked him if he liked the chicken dish. Martín's hand tightens around his knee. "I spoke to her on the phone recently, actually." 

"She'd said," Tokyo says, and he just knows she's building up to something. "I was surprised to hear she was engaged. Didn't even hear the news of your divorce." 

It's the hold that Martín keeps on his knee that prevents him from leaping over the table at her. 

"She's a publicist, Tokyo. You don't think she would be able to hide a divorce from the tabloids?" 

Tatiana had been able to hide a lot about that period of his life from the press. He's indebted to her too. 

"What happened? Couldn't swim and then suddenly couldn't perform in the bedroom either? Maybe she just realised that you're the devil incarnate?" 

He scoffs. "No, Tokyo. Maybe it was more the fact that I was deeply depressed and that I gave her an out. She took it."

The table is silent. Martín's grip never falters. He loves him so much. _Oh god._

His eyes meet Sergio's, which quickly flick down to his knee. _Oh god._

"Anyone for more wine?" Agata says delicately, pouring herself a glass. He reaches for the bottle, fills his and Martín's glasses, and then drains his glass promptly. He has a horrible feeling Tokyo isn't done yet. 

"So what's your plans, Andrés?" Tokyo says, also draining her own glass of wine. She's drinking red, of course, which doesn't go with the meal they're eating at all. Typical. "Who's the next wife going to be?" 

"He's sitting right next to him!" Agata laughs, cackling with Tokyo. He hates her too now. 

He knows he flushed. He can feel it. 

The table laughs, and Martín even turns to him and offers him a small smile. 

He opens his mouth to retort. He doesn't remember what he says, what words he uses to deny the allegation, to deflect the attention away from him and Martín. All he knows is that whatever he says works, but at the same time it causes Martín's hand to leave his knee, for his face to fall, and for him to stand, claiming that he needs a cigarette. 

_Oh no._

Tokyo leaves the table to go to the restroom, with Cortés suspiciously following, while Agata retreats to the kitchen to finish off the dessert. 

Sergio's hand reaches for Andrés's arm as he tries to stand. His eyes a silent warning. 

Andrés leaves the dining room in search of Martín. The search doesn't take long, as he confirms that he's not in the garden, to then find him outside the front door of the house. 

Martín's furtively inhaling his cigarette, as if he can't smoke it enough. His head's laid up against the brick wall, his neck exposed to the moonlight. His eyes look wet and his breathing's erratic. _Oh no._

"Martín." He says, because it's all that he can think to say. It's not enough. He knows that.

Seeing him, he runs a haggard hand across his eyes, and puts out his cigarette, only to light another. 

"Sorry. Can you go, please? I need a moment." He's so rational, so kind with his request. Still, Andrés's feet don't move.

Martín's face changes. He looks over, expression hardened. "You were so quick, Andrés. So quick. So quick to deny, to make a joke out of me."

He's embarrassed. Martín's not wrong, he's got it completely right. Out of fear, out of panic, he'd tried to hide the love he knows is written all over him. And he'd hurt Martín in the process. He knows he's made a mistake. He's done wrong by Martín, and he's done wrong by himself. How hard would it have been to just say, 'yes, actually I am rather fond of Martín, and he'd make a marvellous wife, or something even more marvellous'?

"I don't know what to say, Martín. I panicked." He's being as honest as he can be, the word 'love' on the tip of his tongue, threatening to fall off. 

"Panicked?" Martín scoffs, lighting another cigarette. "You panic when a wasp flies by your shoulder. That was something else." 

"Yes. You're right, it's-"

"It's nothing, Andrés," Martín says, his eyes welling up with unshed tears. "Most of the time, I feel like you and me are the only two people alive. Then, sometimes, you just pretend I don't exist." 

It hurts. A lot. 

"Martín-"

"No, no. Stop," A tear punctuates his words, rolling slowly down his cheek. "I can't be friends with you anymore, Andrés. It hurts me too much." 

"Martín-"

"Andrés, please! You know how I feel about you. I know I'm not very subtle. Please, just leave me alone. You don't need me anymore." 

And with that, Martín throws his last cigarette to the floor and walks away. 

Friday. 

Andrés spends Friday living in a world where Martín doesn't want to see him. 

He hates it. 

Saturday. 

Andrés spends Saturday living in a world where Martín doesn't want to see him.

He hates it. 

Sunday. 

Andrés spends the start of Sunday living in a world where Martín doesn't want to see him. 

He still hates it. It doesn't get any easier. 

He sits at his desk, trying to busy himself with reading articles and reviewing Cortés's records for the fiftieth time that morning. He wants nothing more than to call Martín, to apologise, to just see him again, to be taught by him, to-

He's had a terrible, amazing little idea. 

He's in the car before he can talk himself out of it, and before he knows it, he's standing in front of the university. 

He slips quietly into the auditorium, ignoring the current speaker's ramblings on quantum physics. It's another three presentations before Martín walks onto the stage, smiling and waving. He's wearing that shirt and the velvet blazer. Good. He selfishly hopes he thought about him as he put it on. 

As could be expected, the man is magnificent, compelling, interesting, but also humble, his words clear, clean and understandable. He could have been presenting on anything and Andrés would have been equally engaged. But it's because his passion for the subject, of the aerodynamics of the fins on spacecraft, that the speech is just stunning. 

The elderly woman next to him turns to him at one point and says, "He's amazing isn't he? I love him." 

"Me too." Andrés says.

It's worse now that he's spoken it into the world. The world now knows that he loves that stupid man on the stage, ranting about the shapes of rockets. And boy, does he. He can't stop beaming, as Martín concludes his presentation and takes a curt bow. He's not sure if it's custom in the science culture to give a standing ovation at the end of a presentation, but he starts one for Martín anyway, feeling oddly emotional at how surprised Martín looks, how overwhelmed he seems. 

"Thank you, thank you so much. I'm ready to open the floor to questions. I think there's a microphone just here if you want to form a line?" 

The first question is about some sort of material used to construct spacecraft, and Martín answers perfectly. Of course he does. 

Andrés stands and joins the line. He waits patiently as the other enthused scientists ask their burning questions, and watches as Martín answers them all with a practised ease way beyond his years. 

When he finally approaches the microphone, his eyes finally meet Martín's. He looks at him hesitantly, unsure, but above all, surprised. 

"Hello," Andrés says, not even attempting to hide his smile. It's good to see him, really good. He feels instantly calmer, comforted. "I'd liketo ask about the impacts your proposed designs would have upon existing knowledge about thermodynamics." 

Martín understands, of course he does, looking far too emotional for a man who is supposed to be presenting. Terrible form, really. His face softens, head tilting slightly in what looks a lot like relief. Andrés can see him bite his lip ever so slightly, unsure, as if he needs to occupy his lip just incase it says something inappropriate for a scientific presentation. 

"That's a great question! I'm _so_ glad you've asked. So, I think, it's first important to note that..." 

Martín sets off into a spiel about thermodynamics that Andrés heard first in his living room. 

Andrés considers his work to be done, so he retreats to the back of the auditorium as the event ends, slipping out once Martín leaves the stage. 

The air is cooler, nicer on his skin as he steps back out to the car. The world feels a little bit better now that he's seen Martín, that he's made some sort of gesture. He had to do something. 

His fingertips are on the door handle to the Figaro when he hears it. 

"Andrés!" 

He lets out all of the air within him. He sees Martín, all but running towards him. He's never felt like his life was something out of a novel until now, or at least until he first met Martín. It seems only fair that he meets him in the middle. If he runs too, well, let's just say that his doctor said that exercise or something had been doing him some good. 

Under the streetlight, he can see the uncertainty in Martín's eyes. They're both breathless, but that's likely just the running. 

Andrés speaks first. 

"Hello."

"Hi."

They stare at each other for a moment, and Andrés is suddenly aware that he hadn't planned for this bit. Going to the university, asking the question about thermodynamics, he was able to practise that in the car journey. He hadn't particularly accounted for Martín meeting him outside. 

"What did you think? Was I good?" Martín asks, a small smile offered across his lips. It's an offering: it's Martín saying that he too can't go on like this. It's torture being friends like this, but it's worse being apart. 

The words 'you were magnificent' that he intended to say are muffled in his throat once he takes Martín's face into his hands and kisses him. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friends!
> 
> My sincerest apologies - life really got in the way as of late and my ability to sit down and write was temporarily compromised. 
> 
> BUT. I am back! And dare I say, better than ever? I have returned with the gusto and energy and determination to continue this fic. I cannot BELIEVE I left us just as they'd gotten together! I'm simply criminal. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this very belated chapter!

To describe the rest of Andrés's Sunday evening would be impossible. He knows it will exist within him, somewhere, forever. It's a series of memories too special, sacred, and intimate to simply forget. That would do a disservice for the events that transpired between the kiss in the University's car park and, well, _everything else_ that happened after. 

So as to not bore onto the _details_ of the evening that ensues, Andrés commits the night to his conscious memory in a series of six 'highlights'. 

Highlight one: 

Moments after their lips part, the two men stare at each other, their mouths preparing to form words, phrases, comments, quips. It's almost as if the tongues in their mouths had been so previously preoccupied that they forgot how to function. In fact, that's exactly what happened. 

Andrés speaks first. Because of course he does. But let it be known, that in reality, he says something far less intelligible than the way he chooses to remember it. 

"As I was saying before you rudely interrupted me with your lips, you were quite the delight on stage, Martín."

"I think you were the one that kissed me, Andrés." 

"Maybe it was more of a symbiotic experience?" 

"Sure," Martín breathes, his head shaking in feign annoyance. He tightens his coat further across his chest, furtively glancing over his shoulder, looking far to self-conscious for a man who moments ago had been quite excited about the idea of a very public display of affection. "Listen, Andrés, I..."

Andrés, being the generous individual that he has come to identify himself as, allows Martín all of five seconds to attempt to find the words he's searching for before interrupting. 

"Martín, allow me. I believe I misled you, Martín. I misled myself. For that I apologise." 

"You apologise to yourself?" 

"No! I'm apologising to you."

"Why?"

"For denying you of me. Of this," the words come out in a jumble that Andrés can only hope makes sense. The more he speaks, the less he feels capable of articulating it. How could he ever articulate the thing that sits between the two of them? "I was being fearful, cowardly. I was afraid of bargaining our bond for an uncertain future. I thought it would be better - safer - to keep at a distance where we couldn't lose it all."

"The future is pretty much always uncertain, Andrés. It's like its whole USP," This man. So wise. Martín's hand makes its way back towards Andrés's cheek, soft and warm. "Listen. How about you involve me in that kind of decision next time, hm? I think I'd like to have been consulted." 

"I'll think about it," Andrés says, the words coming out of him seeming irrelevant now as his focus returns back to Martín's glorious lips. "Can I involve you in the decision of whether we should kiss again?"Martín

Martín's answer comes in the form of a kiss. Wonderful. 

When they part again, mostly just for the virtue of intaking air, Andrés is the first to speak again, because of course he is. 

"So," he says, still as breathless as a teenager. "What happens now? What happens next?" 

"I mean, there's a chapel just down the road," Martín mumbles against Andrés's neck. "I normally ask for dinner before sex - actually, who am I kidding, I totally don't."

"Is that what you want?" 

"If that's what you want, then it's what I want." Martín's eyes come back to meet Andrés's, severe and serious. 

"It is what I want, Martín. Very much. I've thought about it." 

"Have you now?" Martín's smile is simply devious, and Andrés is so occupied with committing it to memory that he nearly forgets to respond at a sensible rate. 

"Yes," Nailed it. "I don't want you to think I want only that, though."

"You mean you don't just want me for my body?" Even here, when they are arguably at their most vulnerable and open and honest, Martín still has the capacity to joke and shroud them both in a safe blanket of humour. Oh god, he's in deep, isn't he? 

"I want your body, yes," Andrés says, low, as he backs Martín towards his car, until he's got him pressed at the passenger door. "In fact, I really want your body. But I also want your brilliant mind, your witty tongue, your sense of humour, your good nature, your-"

He's interrupted by a kiss. Was that to stop him talking? That's new. 

"You've already got it all, you don't need to -"

He shuts Martín up with a kiss in retaliation. That will show him. 

"So, you don't want to go to dinner first?"

"Andrés, since we've met we've been in a constant state of foreplay. I may simply die if we don't start having sex, like, right now." 

Well, that simply won't do, will it? 

"Right. So, logistics -"

"Andrés!" Martín exclaims, his hands balled tight in Andrés's shirt. "Just open your car, come on, hurry up! I've made it work in smaller spaces than that."

"No. No way." 

"No?"

"No!" 

"What do you mean 'no'? I have to admit, Andrés, I don't think all of these mixed signals are very conducive to a -"

"We are not having sex in my car."

"Andrés." Martín says in a whine that nearly makes Andrés reconsider his stance on car-sex.

"I will drive us back to my house, where there is a perfectly suitable bed that will serve us well." 

"But I need my car tomorrow. I can't just leave it here."

"Then it's settled! We will separately drive back to my house, then have sex." 

Martín balks at him. He seriously looks as if he is reconsidering all of the pining he's done for the better part of the last year. 

Andrés is already getting into his car when Martín speaks again. 

"Andrés? Do you have, um, stuff?"

"Stuff?" 

"Things." 

"Things?" 

Martín huffs, exasperated and very frustrated. "Lube! Condoms!"

"Great point, Martín! God, you're clever! Be a dear and get some on your way to my house!" He leans out of his car window to quickly peck Martín on the lips before driving away. 

Highlight two: 

He has all of eleven minutes before Martín knocks on his door. He spends most of it preening his shirt. At one point, he takes off all of his clothes, decides it's far too presumptuous, and puts them all back on again. Sprays himself with cologne. Puts a fire on. Pours wine. Prepares a platter of snacks. It's been a while, okay? 

When Martín finally knocks on the door, Andrés times a whole minute and four seconds before opening it (despite being stood by the door, waiting, as he had been for the previous four minutes). They stare at each other for a moment, until Andrés steps back slightly to let the other man in. 

The staring resumes. For a second, he's so violently afraid. What if he's changed his mind? The drive was rather long, and certainly wasn't helped by a series of roadworks that certainly deflated any sense of arousal. 

"Hello." And it feels so stupid to say, but he feels like he is seeing Martín for the first time. As if they should reintroduce themselves now that they're lovers (?), now that they aren't just _them_. They're something far more special now. Powerful. Together. Powerful together. 

Martín delicately places the bag full of 'stuff/things' on the side table, and takes Andrés's hand.

Oh, so it's going to be like this, is it? 

Highlight three: 

After a frantic stumble up the stairs (what started gorgeously intimate and delicate quickly dissolved into a beautifully hedonistic mess), Andrés finds himself sat at the foot of his own bed, staring at Martín who stands in front of him, breathless. He reaches to cup Andrés's cheek.

"Andrés? You okay? You've been staring for like five minutes. It's okay if this is all you want. We don't have to go any further-"

"No! No, no. I'm fine. I just-"

The staring continues. 

"What is it?"

"I can't decide."

"There's not a lot of deciding to be done, Andrés. More of a doing thing, I think." 

Andrés huffs, searching for how best to explain the essential dilemma in his head that is currently taking up all space available. Really, he can't think of anything else. 

"It's just," and it feels so much worse as he says it aloud, so the volume decreases with each word. He's suddenly struck with feelings of nerves and shame. "Idon'tknowwhatIwanttodowithyourshirt."

"What?"

"I can't decide whether I want to rip that cursed shirt off of you or whether I should leave it intact. I don't want to destroy it, but I really want to rip it off of you, okay?"

Martín's laugh is delicious. 

"Andrés, what am I going to do with you?" he beams down at him as he thinks of a solution. "How about I undo all of the buttons bar one and you can tear that one off, okay? We can always sew it back on tomorrow." 

Well, that seems fair. 

Highlight four:

Highlight four is just basically all of it. Everything about it. Just all of it. Everything. 

Highlight five:

Highlight five is everything about the second time. 

Highlight six, you may ask?

The third, of course.

When Andrés wakes up, it's bright. The curtains are open, he can hear music downstairs, and the sky looks bluer. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. He takes on the stairs in search of the man who's left bed far too early. 

Martín's dancing and singing downstairs to whatever pop ballad is on the radio, wearing nothing other than an apron, and drinking something out of a crystal champagne glass that looks a lot like orange juice. 

Andrés only makes his presence known in order to interrupt Martín's questionable vocals.

"Andrés!" Martín exclaims, turning around and pulling him into a soft, lazy, delectable kiss. "Where do you keep your cat food?"

"Cat food?" 

"Yes! For this guy here," Martín crouches down and picks up a ginger haired cat that Andrés has never seen in his life. "You didn't tell me you had a cat. What's his name?"

For a man who has been awake for all of seven minutes, Andrés is incredibly calm as he says, "I don't have a cat, Martín." 

Martín's ensuing shriek is hilarious, as he scurries to the door and all but throws the cat outside of the house. He's frantically washing his hands, and singing again to apparently calm himself down, and Andrés can't help but chuckle to himself. 

It's possible, Andrés thinks, that he could have picked someone to become infatuated with that wasn't quite so...eccentric. But something within him tells him that he wouldn't have it any other way. 


	15. Chapter 15

It's quite the feat, Andrés thinks as he watches Martín lace up his shoes, that they've been able to stay together, holed up in his house for five whole days. The conscious decision had been made by about eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning for the two of them to stay in, write the rest of the week off, and to, as Andrés had put it 'reintroduce themselves to each other, with the newfound label of romance attached to it' and as Martín had equally as delicately put it 'see how long we can turn our phones off and have sex for'. 

Andrés was rather pleased to report that they'd eventually done both. 

He'd learned a lot in the last few days. Like, a _lot._ Once the inevitable nervousness had subsided and they'd slipped into a comfortable, and yet oddly familiar setup. It might have been five days since he'd taken Martín's face into his hands and let his lips instead communicate the intangible, all-consuming thing that's been surrounding him ever since Martín had fallen into a pool and into Andrés's life, but time had seemed to stretch and bend and to subsequently tick to their own rhythm. 

They'd taken the chance to learn each other, in an operation that previously seemed impossible. He knew that Martín knew him, and could see him, but he'd been able to share even more of himself (and how very terrifying and totally not easy that had been) with the comforting assurance and equal sharing in return. They'd also taken ample opportunity to learn each other's bodies, and that had been a very important task. A very rewarding task, too. 

It was all becoming very good, very healthy, very lovely, very nice. 

Which was why, Andrés was convinced something was on its way to ruin everything.

Naturally.

Which was why, he was riddled with anxiety at the sight of Martín preparing to leave. And of course Martín was leaving for a good reason! He had that lovely little space club thing to get to, and who would Andrés be to deny his poor little niece of her favourite (not confirmed) part of her week? Who was he to deny her an enriching educational session? 

Well, he definitely tried, at least. 

Begged, even. That was a new one. 

Martín had been ever so flattered, chuckled, blushed, but shaken his head softly and planted a little kiss on Andrés's forehead. That felt like enough of an answer. 

And now, here he is, wrapping a scarf that Andrés could have sworn was his, and reaching for the door. And it's so odd, but Andrés could swear that Martín also looks ever so nervous right now. He's retied the same shoe. Thrice.

And it's not that Andrés isn't thankful, because every minute has become gold dust. How quickly it all changes! He'd been so eager to lose this, to avoid this, to avoid Martín. And in the name of fear! He's partly filled with shame at the thought that he might have never gotten the pleasure to experience this. Now the thought of being apart is filling him with dread. He can't quite figure out which is a scarier thought. 

Maybe it's the thought that if Martín steps through that door, and carries on with his life as normal, then the bubble will be broken. Their safe little bubble that they'd created for the last few days, where nothing could tear them apart. It's going to be shattered once that door opens, isn't it? 

Martín lingers by the door for another moment, and starts to speak. Andrés dares the universe, dares it. 

"Don't have too much fun without me, Andrés." Well, it certainly doesn't sound like a good-bye.

"I don't know how that would be possible." He says in response. Martín smiles at that, and it feels like a win. Or some sort of sign.

"Right. Well, so..." His hand's twisting the doorknob. Something's got to happen! Andrés wills himself to speak, to interject, but instead just stares at Martín blankly, as if watching some sort of car crash outside his window.

"Yes. So..."

"So..."

"So."

The door's opening.

"Yes. So..."

"So." 

His foot is inching closer and closer to the outside world.

"Right. Yes. So..."

"So..?"

"So..."

"Martín! Do you want to have dinner tonight?" 

Well, that came out a bit more severe than anticipated. 

"Yes! Yes I do!"

"Good!" 

And with that, the door is closed. 

A success? Maybe. 

He's positively _vibrating_ with, well, everything actually. Excitement, nerves, all of it. He's suddenly rather aware of the oodles of energy that he has, _which is rather surprising considering the recent week's activities,_ and nowhere to put it. 

Well, he could at least put his energy to the work that he's been neglecting for the last week. So he does, reviewing stats and strategies for Cortés's next meet. He's aware that he's got an eye for this kind of thing. When he was competing, he'd had to study his own performances frequently. He knows a good stroke when he sees one. He watches the videos available until he's positive there's nothing left to see, and until he's positive that if he watches Cortés's dodgy last stroke one more time, he might throw up. 

He organises a reservation at a little bistro for later tonight, and finally turns his phone on to text Martín the details. The notifications flood in, mainly from his brother and from Agata, mainly containing messages such as 'are you alive?'. He ignores them. 

It's another two hours until dinner, and he (very sensibly) spends them picking out the perfect suit. 

When they return together, royally fed, they fall onto the sofa, a satisfied groan escaping Martín's lips. The lasagne _had_ been that good.

And oddly, again, a silence falls between them. Andrés is too busy removing his shoes to notice Martín's eyes on him, but once he looks up, he's aware of his own vulnerability again. 

Thankfully, Martín speaks first.

"So. I had a lovely time tonight."

"I did too." He replies tentatively, feeling as if he's on trial all of a sudden. What did he say to mess this up? What did he do this time? 

"Would you, um, have considered that a date, at all?"

And what a question that is!

"Yes, yes I would have." Of course he would have. It's something that they can do now - their association has unlocked a whole new plethora of activities for them to do. Together. 

"Right. Okay. So, I'm very aware that this is all new to you and everything, but I feel like I wouldn't have to ask if that had been a date situation if there had been..um..."

"You can speak freely, Martín." He certainly can speak freely, but whether he's going to want to hear it is going to be another matter.

"Here, with you now, with your arm around me, and my head literally leaning on you, I know where I stand. At the restaurant, it might have been...a bit different."

And he understands. 

"Ah." 

And there's the shame again. He'd feared this. 

"I mean I don't need you all _over me_ , but like..."

"Yes. I understand." he has to clear his throat slightly in preparation for speaking again. Odd.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." Martín's hand has moved up to his cheek, anchoring him, forcing him to meet his eyes.

"This is sort of new for me, Martín, I..." And for a man so vocal, he's so confused as to why it's so hard to speak. Martín's being so nice about this. They're having a _healthy,_ calm conversation. This is a good thing. All he needs to do here is be honest and open. That can't be too hard, right? Right? "Well, it's not new for me, you know I've been married before..." 

Martín laughs at that at least. "I know, I know, what you mean. It's new for you and me. Together. And that's okay! I just might need some assurance that we are moving in the right direction, okay?"

"We are. We should have had this conversation a bit earlier, don't you think?" 

"Well, we got a bit occupied with the _doing_..."

"Yes, yes, we did," Andrés chuckles, feeling just about as relieved as Martín looks, smiling in front of him. "Listen, it might take me some time, but I want to try. For this. Us. You."

"I can work with that." Martín grins, settling further into their embrace, his touch warm and safe.

The silence that falls around them again is comfortable this time, and they lay there, on the sofa, entwined, feeling the rise and fall of Martín's chest against his own. 

And maybe it's the bubble of vulnerability and honesty he's just been in, but the words continue to fall out of his mouth. 

"I can't believe I was so prepared to stop this. To not let this happen."

"I can't believe I'd convinced myself you were completely straight."

"I can't believe I'd convinced myself that I was completely straight." 

Their laughs ripple off of each other, like two connecting rivers, joining the same stream.

"I was afraid of what you were doing to me. I hadn't felt...that way..."

The laughter stops, and as he's speaking Andrés wonders what had been in the wine at the restaurant, because it is _all_ coming out now. 

"Since you'd last been married?"

"No."

"No?" Martín's eyebrows raise at that. 

"Not since I'd been married, no. None of those times. Not since...ever."

"Aw, Andrés!" And there's Martín's hands again, angling his chin towards his own face again. "That's so sweet! You _like_ me."

"Stop. Stop it," and even though he's complaining, he's smiling. That's the effect Martín has on him of course. "I'll change my mind. Just you watch." 

"You like me! Go on, say it, tell me you like me. I know you want to."

He wants to say more than that. Martín deserves words better than just 'like'. He deserves sonnets, goddammit. 

"I like you, Martín. I like you very much." 

Martín's lips meet his in response, his hold on his cheek firm, pulling him close, almost as if they didn't have all the time in the world. 

When he pulls away, it's unfortunate that the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Can you give me some time until I tell Sergio?"

"Can you stop talking about your brother?"

"No, I just -"

"I'm pretty sure he knows, Andrés. He gave me some very odd advice the last time we'd played chess."

Andrés has _a lot_ of questions that he'd like to unpack there. _A lot._ He decides against it.

"Sergio is...he's important to me. I'd like to tell him myself, before we broadcast ourselves. Is that okay?"

"That's okay with me," Martín breathes against his lips. "Now, can we _please_ stop talking about your brother?"

That seems like a sensible enough request. 

They kiss for what seems like hours, and maybe it is, because together, they can manage to negotiate their own time and rules. Martín's shirt is the first casualty (if Andrés ordered more shirts online for Martín just for ripping purposes, no he very much did not, thank you very much), followed by a surgically removed tie and jacket from Andrés. He won't just be _throwing_ his clothes across the room. He gently lays them in a sensible place, of course. 

His hands are on Martín's belt, the negotiated next casualty of tonight's activity, when his front door opens. Because _of course_ it does. And _of course_ it's the rather incriminating image of Martín straddling Andrés, mouths attached, that Ágata is greeted with as she (very rudely, thank you very much) strides into his home. 

"Oh my fucking god!" Is _of course_ the first words to come out of her mouth. "What the fuck?!"

The next thing is _of course,_ Martín's ensuing shriek as he clambers off of Andrés and refastens his belt. 

"Hot tip, Andrés," Martín pants, looking rather flushed. Andrés is positively _furious_ that Ágata has interrupted. Martín looks absolutely delectable tonight. _Furious._ "Maybe, if it's not too much to ask, can you please, I don't know, lock your door? People do that sometimes." 

"Martín!" He hisses, but there's no malice in it. He has all that saved for the woman stood, shell-shocked in his doorway. "Well, you might as well come in." He's thankful, that he's still rather clothed, and also equal parts horrified and aroused that Martín has elected to stop his redressing at refastening his belt, wandering over to the kitchen to retrieve (hopefully, if he can receive the telepathic signals he's being sent) some alcohol, still very much shirtless. 

Ágata still hasn't said a word since her very dramatic entrance, but does sit down, albeit not at the end of the sofa they'd just been on. Rude. 

"So," she starts, her mind clearly whirring. "How long has this been going on?" 

"It's okay, you don't have to pretend. I know that you know."

"What?" Now it's Martín's turn to be confused as he returns from the kitchen with three glasses of scotch. Appropriate. God, Andrés loves this man. "She knows? When did you tell her? You told her before your brother?"

"I didn't know."

"Um, yes you did, Ágata." 

"I think I'd remember this, Andrés!"

"What about the CCTV?"

"Please do not tell me that you've had sex in my pool. I'll kill you both now. I have no shame."

"No! God no! Although..."

"Martín!" 

"We had an...encounter in the pool one night." 

"That sounds worse than sex, Andrés! We kissed, for the first time, in the pool."

"I thought you'd been watching us on the CCTV." 

"Well Bogota told me that it was a bit of an oversight to do that last time, so I stopped. I mean, if I'd known that I'd missed out on _this_ , then, well-"

Andrés is struck with the sudden realisation that he broke into her office for no reason at all. Amazing. 

"Why are you smiling, Ágata?"

"I am _very_ happy about this development."

"Hey, me too!" 

And if this whole encounter couldn't get any worse, Martín goes over to Ágata and high-fives her. A high-five. Unbelievable.

In a hushed, but not at all inaudible, tone: "Is the sex good?"

And as Andrés is exclaiming his discomfort, saying that "You really do not have to answer that base, vulgar question, Martín", because it's "absolutely none of her fucking business", Martín is very happy to deliver the report of "Oh yeah, amazing". That, somehow earns him another high-five. Un-fucking-believable. 

"What brought you here anyway? What was so important that you just had to break in here and ruin our night?" 

"Oh yeah! I mean I _completely_ got sidetracked there. We _will_ return to this, boys. I have _a lot_ of questions," Andrés doesn't even hide his rolling eyes at that. "I'm here because you weren't answering your phone! For days! I can see now what you were doing, but..."

"Yep, great, thank you for that! What, earth-shattering, urgent business brings you here?" 

"Two things. One, being that I'm pregnant."

"Cool. What else?"

"Andrés!" Martín scolds from over Ágata's shoulder, hugging her tightly. As, you know, normal people do when they hear good news such as a long-awaited pregnancy. 

"Yes. Sorry. Congratulations, Ágata." 

"You're such a good influence on him, Martín. Never leave him. You make him tolerable."

"I am literally right here. And still waiting for the other bit of news, if you'd be so kind." 

"Oh yeah. That. Cortés has quit."

"Quit?" 

"Quit."

He just _knows in his bones_ that Tokyo had something to do with this. 

"I'm sorry, Andrés. I know you were excited about it. But we'll find another! I'll email you tomorrow with some possible scouting events?"

He nods, but he's already somewhere else. He's fallen back into his seat, his stare empty, non-seeing. What a disappointment. A taste of a new career, only to be swiped away by some kid's cowardice. A taste was all it was supposed to be, it seems. 

He barely notices Ágata leave. Martín deals with that, and soon slides back next to him, pulling him close. 

"I asked for her discretion. I didn't know what you wanted, with-"

"Thank you." He adores this man. 

"I'm sorry, Andrés. This sucks. But you'll find another kid in no time! Take him all the way to the Olympics, and he'll be even better than Cortés."

"I mean that won't be difficult, Cortés really did have his issues. His breath stroke was often suspicious."

"See? You're already moving on! Now, come on, I think I can help you take your mind off this." Martín's tone and his raised eyebrows and his wandering hands fill in the gaps. 

"That sounds good. But I...just can't stop thinking about that breath stroke."

"What?"

"I mean all of them in that video were awful. What are they teaching the kids these days?"

"Andrés, come on, come to bed, you don't need-"

This carries on for quite some time. Andrés's musings quickly turn into some sort of lecture about proper stroke alignment, about the intended grace and art form of swimming that seems to be 'completely and utterly lost in recent times', whilst Martín's previous arousal and energy slowly flag, until -

"-and don't even get me _started_ on the pointed toe debate, I really don't-"

"Andrés?" 

"Yes?" 

"I am rather...tired. I think I'd like to go to bed. I suggest that you get all of this out of your system and then join me, okay?" 

"But who am I supposed to-"

Martín pulls out his laptop and places it delicately in Andrés's arms. 

"Write it all down. Like a blog, maybe? I don't know, just get it all out, and then come and sleep. Or I'll start withholding sex, and you don't want that, okay?" And with that, he kisses him softly before heading upstairs. 

Andrés scoffs, (because no way would that man last five minutes trying to withhold sex) but sits down with the laptop regardless, staring at the blank document on its display. 

He pulls his fingers together, stretches them, clears his throat, and slowly begins to type. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> y'all know that I'm turning these chapters out on the quick to make up for my long absence
> 
> enjoy friends!

It's bad. No, it's awful. Actually, maybe horrific might be better? Horrendous? Offensive? 

"Andrés, you're doing it again. Just pick a word." 

Martín's barely even looked up from his own position at the other side of the lounge (which seems, as of late, to have become some sort of office), reading some sort of engineering book that he'd rather enthusiastically described upon his entrance today.

Andrés avoids huffing and just 'picks a word', as if it was so easy. 

Crafting an extended piece of literature is a delicate balancing and lacing of mere letters, transforming them into visual art. 

He avoids a huff, but doesn't avoid the scoff. In fact, he rather enjoys throwing it across the room. He enjoys it even more when he can see a tiny little trace of a smile slipping through the steely expression Martín is working very hard to uphold.

He types a little more, waits until he knows Martín's watching him and-

"And...post!" He squares his shoulders a little in triumph and closes his laptop in finality. "We can just wait for the comments to roll in, Martín."

And because Martín is Martín and is The Most Amazing Person on Earth™, he puts his book down, not even caring to mark the page (very careless behaviour, if you ask Andrés) and crosses the room. He very boldly (if you ask Andrés) spins Andrés's chair round and plants himself in Andrés's lap, his arms snaking around his neck. 

"Are you Pavloving me into productivity, Martín?" Not that he minds. No, not at _all_. Every time he's finished a blog post (oh yeah, we're doing _that_ now) Martín has approached him and...shown his appreciation for the art form of blogging.

"I don't know what you are talking about," Martín evades, batting his eyelashes in a way that indicates that he knows exactly what is being talked about. "I don't think there's anything wrong with a little reward. You're working hard! You deserve it."

He hums his assent, seemingly unable to do anything else other than to hold onto Martín as tight as he can.

So the blog is going well.

What started as a relief for poor Martín's ears (bless the poor man, he went from not being able to even swim, to being subject to endless lectures about proper form in a matter of half a year) quickly became something rather vital for Andrés. Something to take his mind of the betrayal of the kid dropping out, citing 'that swimming was kind of boring, ya know?'. Andrés didn't 'ya know'. To Andrés, swimming had always been art. And art needs critics! Without critics, art forms crumble; they'd have nothing to respond to otherwise. He'd started innocently enough, with a five-thousand word discussion on the dying form of the front crawl. Posted it to a not at all prolific website. Then posted the link to that website on Twitter, to an account that he made Martín help him make. 

Funnily enough, a blog about Olympic-level swimming, written by a prematurely retired Olympic swimmer garnered some attention in the sporting community. The comments had been nice, supportive, excited. Excited by him! Most had found his way with words entertaining, and that felt like a win too. 

So, he'd written another. 

And another. 

He's now releasing weekly reviews of swimming performances on his own website. And the amazing thing, the truly amazing thing, is that it's made him fall for the sport all over again. What a wonderful thing. He only has Martín to thank for that, he thinks. Just add that to the ever-growing list. 

"Now, I could stay here all day...in fact, I am extremely tempted to just stay here all day, but I do have to go," Martín says, very unfairly detangling himself from the embrace that he very much initiated. "I'll see you at Ágata's at four for the gender reveal though, yeah?"

"Gender reveal?"

"Straight people shit. Balloons will be popped, cake will be eaten, alcohol will be consumed," Martín shrugs, pulling on a jacket. "Who are we this afternoon, Andrés? Buddies, pals, husbands?"

Andrés's ensuing silence gives him enough of an answer, Martín's soft smile never fading. This man is a saint. Patient. So patient. Andrés is very aware of his lack of qualifications to deserve this man. 

"You still haven't told Sergio?" 

"There hasn't been an ideal moment as of yet." 

That's true. Amidst all of the avoidance he had previously been undertaking to (selfishly) keep himself and Martín to themselves for as long as possible, once he'd decided that yes, he was ready to inform his brother of this new development in his life, the moment just had not presented itself. The last time they'd been in the car alone together, Sergio actually had to pull over to vomit all over the side of the road. A bad smoothie, allegedly, but Andrés remembers well that Sergio often likes to 'ignore' the mild allergy he has to strawberries. It had not felt right with Sergio, bent over, retching, for Andrés to start a speech about the romance in his life. 

"Don't put too much pressure on it. It's on your terms, no one else's." 

He doesn't really know how to respond to that. 

"Thank you," he breathes out alongside a sigh of relief he hadn't realised he was holding in, as well as another bit that nearly slips through- "Martín, I lo-"

He stops himself promptly, looking up at Martín with wide eyes. Martín stares down at him with equally wide eyes, but with a shit-eating grin Andrés knows he will never tire of seeing. 

"What was that?"

"That was nothing, Martín. I didn't hear anything."

"Funny, because it sounded a lot like 'I lo-"

"Right! That's enough of that," Andrés stands, all but pushing the other man out of the door. "You're clearly very busy today, so have a love- _nice_ day, and I will see you at the straight people thing. Gender reveal. Gender reveal! I'll be wearing a cream blazer, so style yourself accordingly."

He closes the door to punctuate his own sentence before he realises that Martín's shoes are still on this side of the door. He opens the door just a crack, and throws them outside, hearing Martín's 'thanks!' before the door is promptly shut again. 

Well. Andrés totally nailed that. Uber cool, calm and collected, no? Yeah, okay, maybe not. 

He's tugging at the buttons on the aforementioned cream blazer a few hours later in Ágata and Bogota's garden, wondering how and when Martín learned to beat him at his own game. Andrés was late, he always makes sure of that, but Martín really is taking the cake here. Which is ironic, because it's Andrés who is currently eating cake with a plastic fork. Terrible form, really. Andrés has been here for _five minutes._ People are still arriving, in their throngs, and Andrés wonders how Bogota (who clearly was in charge of the guest list, by the looks of it) envisions organising all of these people into this meagre space. 

Luckily it's only another minute of being Martín-less that Andrés has to endure before he sees him, patterned shirt and all, slipping through the gate.

"You're late. I would know, I was also late." Andrés says, guiding him to the bar, fighting the urge very much to place his hand on the small of Martín's back. He's thrilled Martín's here now. He's relaxed instantly. He wants to be all over him. 

It's odd, though. Martín's quiet, merely nodding at all of the updates Andrés is giving him of the five minutes of the party he's missed. 

They fix themselves some drinks, Martín electing to quickly knock back a shot of something that looks like a biohazard. The feeling of something being wrong seeps into Andrés's system. 

"Are you okay?"

"Me?" Martín chokes out a very feeble laugh. "Yeah, I'm fine." 

Well, he doesn't sound fine. 

"Is this about earlier? It's possible I did overreact, but-"

"No! Oh god no! That was...wonderful. It's just that something...weird happened at work."

"Oh."

He barely even tries to mask the relief. 

"But it's okay! We can talk about it later. I'm here now, with you, and all my friends-oh my _Go_ _d_! Monica! You said you couldn't come!"

A curly-haired woman turns around with a smile that could solve all the world's problems. Andrés's instinct is to like her instantly. She hugs them both, regardless of the fact that he's never met her before. 

"Yeah, we managed to get a sitter for Cinci. I couldn't miss this! Ágata's talked a big game about securing some colourful explosives." 

"You're both here? I haven't seen-"

"I haven't seen my husband either, Martín! He said he'd gone off in search of cake, but-Oh there he is! Denver! Martín's here!"

_Denver._

He hears the laugh before he sees his old teammate. 

"Andrés! No fucking way!"

"Denver! We're at a gender reveal! Can you not curse for, like ten seconds?"

"Monica," the man whines, sporting a plate full of cake in his hands, "you can't expect me to just stay quiet! You never told me you knew Andrés! Here, hold my cake." The cake is thrust into Monica's (rather welcome) embrace whilst Denver envelops Andrés in an extremely tight hug. 

It's been a while. Denver is the only person he hasn't seen since the incident. The fourth person in their relay team, present for all of the chaos. Instead of being going home straight away, a disappointed and depressed loser like the rest of them, Denver had given a rather entertaining and beautiful interview, and he'd been catapulted to some sort of stardom. The man had become a celebrity overnight. Last Andrés had heard, he was a presenter on a sports talk show. 

"How long has it been, man? I read your blog!" The clap on the shoulder he somehow earns for that is just as rough as he remembers. It's nice. He had no bad blood with the man. They'd just never managed to make it into the same room since. 

"Let's not talk about the blog, this is Ágata's day, Denver." Martín broaches, tipping another shot into his mouth. Andrés doesn't know whether to be impressed or concerned. Impressed. He decides to be impressed. 

"Are you talking about the blog? Andrés! I love it! You're really dividing the swimming world right now. My inbox is so exciting." Ágata appears from literally thin air, swinging her arm over his shoulders, in a way that if this wasn't her party and she wasn't pregnant, he'd promptly put a stop to. 

"I was saying to one of the producers on my way here that we should totally get you on the show, Andrés."

Wow. Now there's an idea. That might be a step too far. There's a lot of personal development happening right now, being at a party and all with his old and new friends and _Martín_...yeah, it's a lot.

"This is very cool, Andrés." Martín says, his hand neutrally settling on Andrés's upper arm. He's instantly comforted. 

There's tittering all about how very exciting that would be, that swims around Andrés's head like white noise. 

He says he'll think about it in an attempt to move the conversation. 

He's finally thankful for the so-called 'colourful explosives' that take precedence over such a conversation, as the business with revealing the unborn child's gender is underway. He's still rooted next to Martín. Wouldn't have it any other way. He's also rather overwhelmed. 

It's as the pink smoke spreads out across the garden that Andrés involuntarily gasps.

"Andrés? What is it? Are you okay?"

"My ex-wife is here."

She is. Tatiana is across the garden, cheering loudly at the announcement that a girl will soon be joining their group. 

He's suddenly rather aware of his collar being unfortunately tight. This event is _a lot_ right now. He's also aware of Martín's hand on his back, pushing him over in that direction. 

"Go and speak to her! I'll go and get us some food."

"And say what?"

"I don't know! Just be nice. "

"I'm always nice."

"Andrés," A warning. "Be _nice._ And if you are nice to your ex-wife, I'll let you do whatever you want to me tonight." 

Well, he can't really argue with that, can he? 

Tatiana doesn't look the same, but she also looks the exact same. A familiarity. Her red hair sweeps over her shoulder as she turns and notices him approaching. He's pulled into a hug he didn't expect having for the second time today. 

"Andrés! I thought I'd seen you come in! How are you?"

"I'm well, thank you. How are you? I wasn't expecting to see you here." 

Going well, he thinks, as he shoots a look over Tatiana's shoulder to Martín, giving him a very reassuring set of thumbs up, and then, a much more vulgar (and much more exciting) gesture. He loves this man.

"Ágata spoke very highly of the explosives she'd secured for the event, I couldn't resist," Her smile is comforting, genuine. "I saw your blog! I thought it was great, Andrés. I'm glad you're back and better than ever." 

"Something like that. Tatiana, listen-"

"No, no," she's already waving him off, her smile unwavering. "There's no need."

"Please."

And she knows him well enough by now to know that the word 'please' is infrequent in his vocabulary, so she waves him to proceed this time.

"Thank you." That seems as good a place to start as any. "You made it easier for me, when things weren't good. And I'm sorry. I wasn't in a good place, and...." 

She understands. Of course she does. She's good like that. "I like to think that things do happen for a reason, Andrés. I would never have started my own firm if I hadn't left Madrid all that time ago, and met all of those new people. Things are good for me now, Andrés. I hope they are for you too."

"They are." He's happy to confirm with a smile. She seems pretty satisfied with that. 

"So, what else is new? Who's got the insurmountable task of loving you now?" 

His eyes betray him, because of course they do. His eyes flick, and then they linger (curse them) over to Martín, who's currently using his shot glass on the chocolate fountain, and thus thinks he's the smartest person to have ever lived. 

"If you have a scandal that needs a gentle breaking to the public, let me know." Tatiana is a legend. An icon, maybe. Also, somehow a mind reader. Or just very observant. He didn't think he'd been quite that obvious. 

"I don't think I know what you're talking about." He does. Very much so. 

"Not to worry, Andrés. Just a general thought, now that you might be making a television appearance."

News travels fast, huh?

Someone waves over to Tatiana, and she begins to pull away, but not before, "It's good to see you so happy, Andrés. It really was lovely to see you. Don't be a stranger, okay?" 

And with that, she's lost into the sea of people in the garden. He's not alone for long though, because he feels a dire need to save Martín from the chocolate fountain. Or the chocolate fountain from Martín. 

"That went well."

"Good! I'm proud of you. Now, have you given any thought to what you'd like to do to me tonight?"

Andrés tries not to chuckle _too_ loudly. "It's possible that you're going to be a little bit too drunk to do anything, Martín." 

And he's completely right, he thinks (thankful that he stayed sober enough to drive home), as he's all but carrying Martín to the car. 

"Throw up in the Figaro and I'll murder you on the spot. Understood?" 

The nod that Martín gives him isn't exactly comforting, but it will have to do. 

It's the drunkest he's seen Martín, and that's quite the feat. He's very chatty tonight, repeatedly muttering bitterly 'fuck NASA, man'. Well, Andrés is indifferent to NASA personally, but if Martín feels this strongly about it, Andrés isn't one to judge. He wines 'Andrés, I miss you so much' about fourteen times, to which every time Andrés feels it's of course his public duty to remind the poor man in the passenger seat that he is, in fact, right here. 

He drives slowly, but sure enough, they're soon back at Andrés's place. Andrés is wondering if he's going to have to carry the other man in, when Martín's head rolls over to him, smile lazy and eyes half-closed.

"I love you, Andrés."

There it is. 

Andrés suddenly can't breathe. This is amazing. Amazingly-horrifying. Horrifying. Absolutely terrifying. 

He figures even if the next bit goes badly, that Martín is unlikely to remember this anyway, so the next words out of his lips are, "I love you, Martín. Quite a bit, actually." 

Martín promptly throws up inside Andrés's beloved vintage car in response. 

Fucking outstanding. 


	17. Chapter 17

Martín's otherworldly hangover would have been far more entertaining for Andrés, had it not affected him quite so much. 

After the incident in the car, it was only natural for Martín to immediately fall into a deep sleep. A _deep_ sleep. A sleep so deep Andrés had to check for a pulse. Twice. And then, to only make matters even worse than they already were, he has to physically _carry_ Martín into the house. Carry. Him. Into the house. It takes far too long for what it's worth. 

It's an easy enough decision for Andrés to merely leave Martín to sleep in the lounge. No way is he even going anywhere _near_ a bed right now. He loves the man, but maybe not enough for that. To his benefit, Andrés is just (just) nice enough to supply the sleeping beauty with pillows and blankets. It's totally irrelevant if those blankets and pillows are his least favourite, though. It's the thought that counts. 

He then has to approach the task of cleaning the car, which is very much not fun. 

Once that torture is over, Andrés retires to his own room and sleeps spectacularly. Upstairs, of course. When he wakes up, the first thing he does is check on Martín, who is still sleeping soundly, and most of all, alive (Andrés checked). Andrés busies himself with securing coffee and breakfast, two things which are soon to become very essential once Martín wakes-

"Oh fuck. Jesus Christ."

Here we go. He puts on his best smile and tries not to enjoy this too much. 

"Good morning, dearest Martín, can I interest you in a coffee?"

"I'm only going to ask you to stop shouting once, Andrés. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm a little hungover," His voice is hoarse, croaky and restrained and it would be so much funnier if the man didn't look like he was suffering so much. "And yes, a coffee would be great, thank you."

Luckily the coffee's already made, and he hands it to Martín, who looks back at him with wide eyes as if he's some sort of magician. He's silent, bar from a groan of relief or two as he sips the coffee as if it is made of liquid gold. 

"Better?"

"I didn't think I'd even had that much to drink." Martín says, looking down at the mug with a confused expression all over his face. Andrés begs to differ. He'd watched Martín challenge pretty much everyone in attendance to a drinking competition at one point, and the only contender that had accepted just _had_ to be Denver. And Andrés remembers very fondly accompanying Denver to numerous Olympic parties, where he could drink a bar dry. Martín hadn't stood a chance, but he'd held up rather well, considering. 

Andrés's subsequent laugh is clearly the wrong response, as Martín groans and throws his head back into the pillows, which earns him another groan. 

"How bad was I?" 

"You were perfectly fine. Until we left the party, that is." 

"Oh my god, the _party._ I can't even remember what they're having, Andrés! This is awful. Awful!" 

Andrés slides down beside him, equipped with his own coffee. "They're having a girl, apparently. Is that what pink means?" 

Martín's head finds its way to Andrés's shoulder, using his free hand to pull the blanket over the two of them. Delightful.

"Yes, that's what pink means, idiot," Martín's chuckle is a good sign. He seems to be more 'with it' now. "So what happened on the way home, then? Did I sing an entire Christina Aguilera album or something? I've done that before."

Andrés makes a vow to himself instantly to get Martín drunk enough again to be able to witness such a thing. "You were very chatty." Well, he doesn't want to embarrass the man too much, does he? He hasn't even mentioned the current state of his car. 

"Oh," Martín says, seemingly unconvinced. "Anything bad?"

"God no, nothing bad came out of your mouth when we were in the car," Andrés smirks. He's going in for the kill. "Oh wait. Maybe I was wrong about that."

Martín's already pulling back, a horrified look seeping onto his face. "What did I say?" 

"You _said_ nothing. No harm was done verbally." 

"Andrés, please just tell me what I did." He's not far off whining, and it is objectively cruel to let him dangle like this, but that doesn't mean Andrés isn't enjoying it. 

"You threw up. All over the Figaro." 

Martín's hand flies straight to his mouth. He's in shock, apparently, at his drunken behaviour. That is, until Andrés realises that he's not shocked, he's just stifling his own laughter. Escaping snorts only spur the man on more, until he's openly laughing, laughing so hard he has to put his coffee down. Wonderful. 

"Oh my - _Andrés._ I am so sorry, I really don't mean to laugh...but oh my god!" 

Martín can't stop laughing. Giggles that dip into deep belly laughs, and then to that silent kind of laughter where your mouth just remains agape, hands slapping thighs. All of it.

He throws his hands up to his face in a gasp. "Oh my God. You love that car so much. I am so sorry, but also-" That sets him off again, laughing so hard without breath that Andrés is concerned for his safety. For only a moment, though. This man is a car-ruiner! 

The worst thing, though, is that Andrés can't really find it in himself to be upset, angry or anything like that. Before he can think of something witty to quip back, the words are already falling out of him.

"I love you, Martín." 

That stops the laughing pretty quickly. So quickly that Andrés panics. He's said it wrong. At the wrong time or something, or with not enough sincerity, or -

He desperately wants to reach out and grab the words still hanging in the air and to put them back into his own mouth. Hide them. 

"What?"

Here's the opportunity to feign that it was a mistake, a mis-slip. He did it yesterday, and it seemed to work very well, if his memory serves. 

He decides against such tactics. Time to be brave.

"I said what I said. I love you, Martín. Deal with it."

Martín's smile that spreads across his face warms the entire room. He looks relieved, assured, thrilled, because the next thing he says is:

"I love you, too, Andrés." 

And because Andrés's a dick: "Yeah, I know that, Martín. You told me last night. Numerous times." 

That earns him a well-deserved slap on the arm. 

"I didn't."

"You did. It was a rather romantic moment, only ruined by the vomit that was then spread all over my vintage car. I mean, maybe I should take it all back-" 

He's shut up with a kiss. This is quickly becoming one of Martín's favourite tasks, apparently.

When Martín (very cruelly) pulls away, the first thing he does is return to his coffee. Rude. 

"So, have you paid any more thought to going on the TV show with Denver?"

"You have a very selective memory, Martín." 

"I think it would be good for you. But only if you wanted to!"

It would be good. Andrés has been on television before. Sergio used to get him the best interviews when he was at the height of his career. But this is different. An opportunity to be paid to give his opinions on swimming? Outstanding. 

"...and it would be cool to go onto a real filming set." 

And sure enough, as the elevator opens a week later, onto the television set of Denver's show, the first thing Martín says is 'this is very cool'. 

They're ushered into a dressing room, which elicits an 'exciting' from Martín, carrying the outfit options very securely, as if they were precious. Which is good, because they most certainly are. 

Sergio knocks on the door a few minutes after that, also looking rather excited. This is good! Convincing Sergio to take care of the legalities and organising of the appearance had taken a bit of work, but the fact that Andrés took the effort to go Sergio's house rather than do it over the phone seemed to earn him some extra points. 

Denver pokes his head into the dressing room. Or, maybe a better description of that is that Andrés hears the sound of laughter approaching closer and closer as he moves down the hall, and by the time he opens the door, he couldn't be less surprised to see the man on the other side of it. He doesn't even knock! Rude.

"Hey, Andrés! Good to see you! This is going to be a great show, okay?"

Andrés offers him a neutral enough smile, which soon drops when he sees Denver's co-host hovering behind him. 

Andrés does not like Arturo Roman. Never has, never will. He'd interviewed Andrés often during his career, and Andrés had always walked away with his skin crawling and a scowl on his face. 

Sergio had neglected to mention Roman would be here. Or, Andrés had neglected to do his research about the show. 

Regardless, he isn't happy. 

He makes some sort of excuse about needing to get ready to get rid of them. He's already had his Arturo dose for today, and he's still yet to spend an hour with him on live TV. Maybe this wasn't a very good idea. 

Sergio closes the door behind them with a small smile. "Thank you, Andrés. You do actually have about five minutes until you're needed in makeup."

"Makeup?" Martín scoffs. 

"Yes, makeup, Martín. It's for the lights," Sergio says, all matter-of-fact. The man's in work mode, not in brother mode, and Andrés had almost forgotten how much he'd enjoyed this bit. "Now, I've negotiated topics of conversation for the appearance." He says, producing a piece of paper that Andrés will at least pretend to read. 

He probably should read it. Sergio's probably gone to great lengths to ensure that certain topics are off limits. It's his first public appearance since the incident. So there's that. But he's not thinking about that! Not at all.

"I'm going to see if there's snacks!" Turning from the rail where he's hung the outfit options, Martín smiles over at them with an excitement that Andrés can't help but absorb. 

The door closes with a soft click and Andrés tries to ignore Sergio's 'three minutes'. Curse the man and his constant need for punctuality. Live television can wait. He's got an opportunity right now. 

"Sergio?"

"Mmm?" He's barely even looking up from his phone, no doubt going through emails. The man literally never stops working. 

"Can I speak with you?"

"What else do you think is happening right now, Andrés?"

"Just put the phone down."

"Two minutes, Andrés."

"Yes, fine," Andrés bites through the frustration that comes with having a conversation with his brother. "Two minutes." 

The phone is put down. Here we go. He may as well just come right out and say it, so-

"Right. So. Martín and I-"

The door opens. 

"They had so many things, Andrés! I ran out of hands!" Martín beams, holding two plates piled precariously high with food. Sensing the shift in mood in the room, he promptly places the plates down on the side and slips back out, apparently in search of coffee. He's truly a godsend. One day, he'll ask him if he receives telepathic messages, because it sure seems like it sometimes. 

"Andrés, we're running behind now. You've got to be in makeup and ready to go in seven whole minutes. You're not even dressed!"

"Martín and I are together." It's so exposing. He feels naked, which is odd, because he specifically put off getting changed before he had this conversation with Sergio for that very reason. He searches Sergio's face for a reaction, an expression, anything. 

"Yes. Very good. Can you get ready now, please?" 

"No I don't think you understand. We are _together._ Romantically together. Physica-"

"Yes. Well, that's great. Um. Can you please get ready now?"

"Is that all you have to say for this news, brother?" 

Sergio, the fucker, seriously has to think about that question apparently, before finally saying, "Thank you for telling me?", as if it's a question. The cheek!

Andrés just huffs, closes the curtain between them as dramatically as he can muster and gets changed in retaliation. Not because Sergio told him to, because he wants to. 

He's never felt relief like this, he thinks, as he lets out a breath behind the curtain. He's not even sure at this point why he'd put off telling his brother. Since when has he ever not done exactly what he wanted, when he wanted to? Regardless, he gets out all of the relieved smiling that he cannot simply let anyone else see, while he's shrouded by the changing curtain. 

When Martín returns, Andrés is changed, been through makeup and is having a microphone attached to his suit. Andrés is convinced that Martín stayed away longer than necessary to give them extra time to talk. He loves this man. Or, he just got excited on the set and gave himself a little tour. Either works. 

He comes back just in time, because Andrés is just about to be led onto set by a very excitable runner. He can very distantly hear the sound of people. A lot of people. 

"Since when was there a live studio audience?" He's not panicking. No, that would be insane. 

Okay, maybe he's panicking. 

Martín's at his side instantly. 

"Hey, hey, it's all people who want to be there. They want to hear what you have to say, Andrés. I know it's hard to believe, because, well, I mean, _I'm_ the one that has to read your blogs before you post them, but yeah. They're here for you, okay? Take a deep breath and enjoy it. I'll be out there too, cheering you on with everyone else." 

"Okay." He takes a deep breath as instructed. Everything feels a little better after that breath, so he treats himself to another. 

"And if it all goes to shit, _which it won't,_ I can always break out from the crowd and ask a question about thermodynamics, okay?" 

"Okay." He adores this man. 

He lets himself be led towards the sound of cheering. 


	18. Chapter 18

Is it possible to feel excitement, dread and nervousness, all in equal parts? 

He lands himself back in the driver's seat of his car, the sight of Sergio's front door closing to his right. He watches Ágata wave to him with a delightful grin as she lowers herself into her own car, clearly more of a manoeuvre than before with the grow of her belly. She seems happy about this, Sergio had seemed happy (always hard to tell) as he'd said goodbye too. The group of people on the phone call, faceless, but also seemingly very happy. 

He can let himself be happy about this too. He just needs to do something first. 

He barely notices that he's not driven to his own house until he's knocking on the door of Martín's apartment. He hears a soft 'come in if you're Andrés, and stay the fuck out if you're not', and opens the door accordingly. 

He finds Martín in front of a number of large boards, staring and amending with a marker, at equations that look like another language entirely. He reaches for a calculator, types for a moment, then huffs before looking over his shoulder and addressing Andrés with a rather unbothered "What's up?"

"If you're busy..."

"What? This? Oh no, this is just for fun," Martín swings around in his chair to face him finally, bringing his hands up to Andrés neck and pulling his face to meet his. He pulls back softly with a small smirk, "What brings you over to this part of town? I'm not supposed to be at yours for another few hours, no?" 

"I've been offered a job." 

Martín's face changes instantly. And if Andrés didn't know him as well as he does by now, he'd nearly miss that Martín's fingers ever so slightly loosen their hold on him. Odd. "Go on. Tell me more." He says, suddenly reserved. 

"I've just been in a meeting with Sergio, and Ágata, and all these people, producers, on this call, and after last week's appearance, they've been talking and they want me to be a permanent fixture on the show. Isn't it great? I'll be getting paid to verbally abuse Arturo Roman on live television!"

Martín is silent for a lot longer than anticipated. He'd come here for the excitement, the relief, the planning, the joy of the start of this new chapter. This isn't what he'd expected, as Martín releases his hold on him and sits down again, face vacant. 

"I feel like I've missed something here, Martín. What's going on in that beautiful little mind of yours?" 

"I've been offered a job."

"What? That's what I just-"

"I should have told you, I know, but I...I thought it would just kind of go away, but now-"

"Martín?"

"Someone filmed my presentation at the university and put it online. It got a bit of attention, which was great, really, but then I got an email. From some woman named Vanessa. In Houston. She works at NASA."

Andrés thought they'd be kissing between mouthfuls of champagne by now. This is something different, and he's not enjoying it at all. The anguish on Martín's face is painful enough to witness. 

"She just wanted to chat, and so I video called her. I thought she wanted the rights to one of my diagrams, from the way she'd been writing in the emails, but then she was asking me all of these questions, and before I knew it she'd sent me a job offer. I'd be leading an outreach programme for aerospace engineering, getting people into science and space and stuff. It's like-an amazing offer."

Andrés is struck by the sudden compulsion to sit down as well. He settles for leaning on a cabinet instead and to take a deep breath or two.

"So," Andrés says, and his voice sounds completely alien even to his own ears, "what did you say?"

"I asked for some time to figure it out. A month."

"And how much of that month do you have left?"

Martín's eyes are glassy when he meets them again. "Two days." 

He lets out another breath, the air in the room much harder to breathe all of a sudden. 

"And what have you decided?"

"I don't know," Martín's looking down at his hands. "I'm so sorry, Andrés. I know I should have told you. We were still so new, and things were taking off for you with the blog, and things were just so good that I didn't want to ruin anything with this."

He's aware, painfully, that this wouldn't be an issue, wouldn't be a discussion at all, if Martín had a clear answer. Part of Martín wants to accept, doesn't it? Part of Martín wants to move away, to _Houston_ , of all places! Where the, Andrés shudders slightly at the thought, _Americans_ are. The worst bit? He wants it for Martín. The man deserves his dream job, of course he does. Does it have to be outside of Spain, though? Really?

He watches Martín wipe roughly at his eyes with his sweater and stand. "Let's just forget about it, I'm not going to go, am I? It's such a crazy idea, I'd never be able to-"

"Martín," he says, firmer perhaps than intended. "Do you _want_ to go?"

"Yes. No. I don't know," He's - very aptly - reaching through his cabinets, apparently in search of a bottle. When he finally retrieves an unmarked bottle with a very suspicious tinge to the liquid, Martín takes a swig. From the bottle. Not ideal. He's laughing slightly as he says, "You wouldn't come to Houston with me, would you?"

And there it is. It's out there now. The fear that's been lingering between them for the last few minutes. The question, that if they were both honest, they could already answer. 

He owes Martín honesty. He owes him more than that, really, but always honesty above everything. So, he swallows, oddly jealous of the suspicious liquid Martín's making his way through at a concerning speed, before finally saying: 

"No, Martín. I don't believe I could." 

Martín nods. 

"I don't think I'll be going, then."

It's silent for a long time. Andrés watches him from the other side of the apartment, using the counter to hold himself up, braced, trying his very hardest to breathe in rhythm. He feels cold, his skin tingling and numb all at once. And to think he'd imagined they be in bed together now, breathlessly making plans about which flavour of complimentary studio muffins they'd eat first. He'd been selfish, forgetting the other life in his life. It all makes sense, now. The almost wistful looks that Martín would appear lost in. Looks where Andrés would pay everything he had just to get an insight. The bitter little laugh that Martín had given when Raquel had been telling them all about her wedding plans for the upcoming summer. He'd been imagining a world where he wasn't there.

Andrés crosses the room and pulls him close. He can't navigate the feeling, the guilt that's creeping into his system. It feels foreign, like it's not supposed to be there, as if he's said the wrong thing. So he holds him tighter, and pretends that he can't hear or feel the shuddering breaths coming from the other man. 

It's not long before Martín's laughing and joking again, waving a wooden spoon manically in gesture. He's determined to cook, now, it seems, and Andrés couldn't really bring himself to argue, so he made himself comfortable on his sofa and listened patiently to a particularly scandalous story from Martín's university days. 

All the while, ignoring any feelings at all. 

It's a good effort, at least, he thinks, as he squirms in Martín's (far less comfortable than his own) bed, trying desperately to sleep. The thoughts don't escape him, in fact they flood in even quicker now. It's guilt, it's disappointment on Martín's behalf, it's heartache, and what a peculiar little feeling that is.

He can't ask Martín to say no to his dream job, but he also can't go to Houston, but he also can't let Martín go to Houston without him, but he -

It's a dilemma. He won't have Martín resent him for years to come, and he can't be indebted to Martín for years to come, for not going just because Andrés was too afraid of being alone. 

And why wouldn't they want Martín? Of course they'd want him! The man next to his side, with his arm laid comfortably, safely, along his torso, deserves the world, everything, all of it. He deserves more than he can give him, and that's the real tragedy. 

And suddenly he feels as if there's only one option. 

He slips out from under Martín's embrace, and quietly makes his way to the kitchen, where Martín had left his laptop on the counter after showing Andrés a series of photos from the Gender Reveal party that he claims he doesn't remember.

Before he can talk himself out of it, he's opened Martín's emails and is typing furiously. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was going to release this later in the week, but I feel like y'all deserve it right now! 
> 
> Sorry friends - told you something was coming...

"-and not to even mention the gross invasion of privacy-"

"Martín, Martín, please just-"

"No!" Martín's eyes are wild, quickly meeting his own before snapping away as he continues to pace around Andrés's lounge. He hasn't even taken off his shoes in the fifteen minutes he's been here, fourteen of which have been used for this rant, "No! You can't just make a decision like that for me! For us! Where was the communication, Andrés? Where did it go? Did you lose it? Where was the conversation we were supposed to have about this?"

That feels like enough of an opening, so he starts, very calmly, by saying, "I thought I was-"

"Did I _say_ that you could speak? I don't remember that part. I have never been so angry with anyone, ever. And I have been wronged, so many times, so many times, Andrés. I trusted you, okay? So forgive me if I might be 'overreacting' right now." 

"I think your reaction is perfectly-"

"Don't _agree_ with me! Fuck!" 

The man is spiralling. Hands waving around him, with reserves of energy, hurt, anger, frustration just bursting out from his fingertips. 

It's not like Andrés is _enjoying_ this. Quite the opposite actually. But he had expected a reaction like this. He knows his actions are never without consequences, and he knew he'd taken a risk. 

"I just don't know where you managed to get the audacity-"

He knew he'd over stepped a line. He'd acted for both of them without consulting Martín, which, admittedly isn't entirely appropriate in a relationship, but it was in the man's best interests. He'd already spent the last few days trying to justify it to himself and to start to deal, in his own way, with his actions. 

He didn't think Martín would have found out quite so soon, though. He'd barely had the chance to plan what he'd say, so maybe it is a blessing of sorts that Martín's rant doesn't seem to be ending any time soon.

"I understand that I've made-"

"Andrés! Stop talking!" 

He imagines that he's got another good seven minutes of this before he's even got a chance at explaining himself. Seven minutes before Martín will inevitably tire himself out. He patiently waits through all of it, until he watches Martín sit down next to him, limbs lifeless. 

"Can I speak now?"

"You might as well. You've done enough of that already, though." Martín waves a hand without any energy behind it, apparently giving permission. That earns a small laugh out of Andrés. A small, broken, sad, little laugh. 

It's hurting him, too, you know. 

"I apologise for the invasion of privacy and for not consulting you in advance," he begins, delicately attempting to pull Martín closer. To his relief, Martín allows that, at least. "But as for the rest of it, I apologise for nothing else." 

He hears a small whimper, and for a moment, he doesn't know who it's come out of. 

"Tell me, Martín," he continues, his hand softly drawing loose patterns on Martín's shoulder. "When you saw the email, what did you think? What was your first thought?"

"That I've never known anyone I've hated and loved so much simultaneously."

He lets himself smile at that. "And after that thought? Did you ever think about emailing back and telling them it was an error?"

Martín's silent for a while. He hears a sniff, again, not sure who it belongs to. 

"No," Martín's voice is small. "I didn't." 

"Good." 

It's a relief. The risk paid off. All he had to do was the thing that Martín, at his core, wanted to do. 

That night, it felt like he'd typed for hours, writing two crucial emails. One from his own account, and one from Martín's. 

He'd accepted both of their job offers.

He'd hit send and promptly found the remnants of Martín's suspicious alcohol and finished the rest of it off. He didn't even bother to put it into a glass. 

"So. When do you start?" That's not really the question he's asking. He wants to know how much time they have left.

Martín's eyes are sad, but they're full of love, and that's so much worse. "I have two weeks." 

He'd expected as much, but it's worse now it's confirmed. That it's real. That it's happening. That, in two weeks, Martín will be on a plane to Houston, and Andrés...will not. 

"I'll only ask you this once, Andrés," Martín speaks, slowly, a voice foggy with tears. "Will you come with me?" 

"You know I can't." Andrés says, his own voice unsteady now, as he pulls him tighter. "We have things to do, now. People that need us. We just...need to do it without each other, this time." 

"Okay," Martín nods beside him, letting out a small breath. "Then it's decided. You know, Andrés, this is not the weirdest way I've found out my relationship was going to have to end."

And then they're laughing, holding onto each other for dear life, tighter than ever before, tempting the universe to tear them apart any earlier than necessary now that they have an expiration date. Andrés listens and laughs as he's told the most hilariously tragic story of one of Martín's first breakups, and hopes that the days that they have left feel long, that their seconds stretch and give them everything possible. 

He's aware, above all of the other emotions, that he's never known love like this. That must be why it hurts so much, but why it also feels like it's the completely right decision to make. 

He does his best to not lose Martín before it's their time. To enjoy the moments, as if they weren't the last ones. To ignore the final milestones, pretending that it's just another dinner, just another night. They're at each other's side constantly for the next week and a half, packing up furniture in Martín's apartment, making arrangements. It feels so final, as he stares at a boxed up apartment that has been like a second home to him.

He wills the universe for more time. Three months together is a tragedy, a future together stolen away. It's funny, because Andrés always had thought it would have been his health to steal time from them.

He can't even imagine the life that he'll be leading once Martín isn't with him. He can't put it together in his head, can't even imagine a single day. 

Their friends are kind, gracious. They ask the right questions. They plan the surprise farewell party being held the day after tomorrow that Andrés would have loved to organise himself, if he hand't been too scared that Martín would have figured it out. 

He holds Martín tighter, amid the boxes and empty floors.

Three more days. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> first of all, I am SORRY
> 
> second of all, we are now in the home stretch - finally settled on 25 chapters in total, including an epilogue <3
> 
> enjoy - if you can! sorry again

The party is magnificent. In truth, he hadn't expected anything less from Ágata, a person he is convinced that, in another life, would have been an events planner. There's an adequate amount of alcohol, food, music and people funnelled into Sergio and Raquel's house. It's quite the event. 

And Martín had been so surprised, so happy, as he'd opened the front door to reveal a sea of people and festivities and to hear the deafening chorus of 'surprise'. The man was in floods of tears before even stepping into the house, and managed to compose himself for all of four minutes before crying again once he'd been embraced by Ágata. 

It had been a real group effort (Andrés had been in charge of keeping it a surprise for Martín, and he'd aced that - he'd been able to occupy Martín in other ways), and the party was a complete success. The guest of honour was having a great time, and so was everyone else it seemed. It barely even felt like a farewell party. It was perfect, couldn't be better. 

So, why did he find himself outside alone? 

The night air is cool against his skin. He can feel it on his face, his cheeks, and his fingertips, curled around an empty glass. It had been full when he'd ventured out here, walking further and further away from the hubbub and music. He'd excused himself from a rather nostalgic discussion about their swimming days with Denver and Bogota (and it is truly a special thing that they can talk like that again, that they've been able to move on, that-) and slipped outside. His legs had been restless, not happy sat down on the bench outside, and unsettled yet again leaning against the fence. Instead, he'd ended up stood in the middle of the garden, illuminated by strings of fairy lights that he just _knows_ Paula would have insisted be hung up. He'd even brought a pack of cigarettes out here (a half-empty packet he'd picked up off the kitchen counter on his way outside), but it's apparently been a longer time than he remembered, because he'd forgotten to pick up a lighter. 

He doesn't know whether he's annoyed or relieved when he hears the door open behind him, to reveal Ágata slipping outside too. If anyone had to join him, it might as well be her. 

"Hey," she says, cradling her own (non-alcoholic) beverage in one hand. "I wondered where you'd gone to hide. I didn't think I'd find you out here alone in the dark like a psychopath."

He scoffs. "I'm not hiding."

"Then what are you doing out here?"

He doesn't actually know. His feet had brought him out here. He couldn't even register how long it's been. He's spent every moment with Martín since they'd tragically decided that he would indeed have to go to Houston. He hadn't wanted to waste a single minute once he'd known the finite amount of them. It was selfish, really, and he knew that. He wanted Martín with him for longer than they seemed to be allowed. He wants him by his side now. If he'd really had it his way, they'd be alone now, not at this party, magnificent as it is. But there was something within him that needed to be alone right now, to reflect, even for a moment, about what was going to happen tomorrow once he drops Martín off at the airport. What his life will be like. Martín had been a whirlwind, someone who made him excited, someone who had singlehandedly managed to get him to live again, to leave the house, to swim again, to take risks, who had trusted him with everything he had. The gravity of losing that figure in his life isn't lost on him. He just keeps trying to ignore it. 

"I don't know," he says over his shoulder as she approaches him. "Just needed a moment, perhaps." 

"Understandable."

Is it? This isn't about him, tonight. This whole affair, is about Martín. Martín, who is leaving in the morning, taking everything with him and moving. He knows the man has done it before, but this is different. He's leaving a life behind that he wants to take with him. Everything in him twists for Martín. 

But tonight isn't about him. It's really not. 

"How is he?" The question comes out quieter and a whole lot sadder than he'd intended, but Ágata sidles up to him all the same, her warmth cutting through the chill in the dark air.

"He's alright," she confirms with a sip of her drink. "All wrapped up in the excitement of it all at the moment. I'm going to miss him so much, you know."

He's thankful that they'd done this tonight, on the night before he was due to go. A good distraction. It's what he needed. 

They're silent for a while, the echoes of the party continuing behind them, before Ágata speaks again. She looks sad. He'd almost forgotten that this would affect other people too. 

"He's taken it upon himself to give each guest a final lesson about space to remember him by." 

And it's so ridiculous, so silly, so deeply _Martín,_ that Andrés can't even help that the next thing he says is, "God, I love him."

He feels the whip of the air before he can see Ágata's face turned to his. "What?" 

"What?" 

"You-" 

"It's not a big d-"

She's placed her drink on the floor, albeit with some difficulty, and has her hands firmly grasped around his arms now. "You love him? You're telling me that you - _love_ him?!"

"Yes, I don't understand why-"

"I thought you were just fucking!"

"Well, we do that too-"

"Shut _up!_ So you love him." It's not a question. 

"Well, yes."

"You don't want him to go, do you?"

He's silent for a moment before he finally admits to the world in a low voice: "No. No I don't." 

He hears Ágata sigh in frustration before she speaks again. "So, why, Andrés, is he leaving tomorrow? Alone?"

Well, it's a good question. 

"Because he has to. I'm not going to stand in the way of it, I can't make him stay here with me just because I don't want him to go. It's selfish. I'm done being selfish."

They're silent again for a while, before he hears Ágata sniffling.

"Are you _crying_?!" 

"No," Ágata sobs. Liar. "It's the fucking hormones, idiot."

He at least has the decency to offer her a tissue out of his suit jacket. He'd packed extra tonight. He, somehow, thought that he would have been the one to need them. Instead he finds himself numb.

"But really," Ágata says again, sniffing into the tissue, "that is potentially the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard." 

"He..." Andrés trails off, wondering where the courage has suddenly come from to speak so frankly, "He's changed my life. I have to repay him somehow, but I can't go with him. So, he's going. Alone." 

He hears her say his name in another sob as she pulls him into a hug. He lets her. Maybe he needed it too. 

As they part, ready to go back inside, he has a thought. "Ágata."

"Yes?" 

"I need a favour. Or namely, a set of keys." 

It's a few more hours of enjoying the party, until it subsides, people taking their leave, embracing Martín tightly. It's worse watching so many people be affected by his departure. He's so loved. 

After more tears and hugs, Martín decides he's finally ready to leave and go to bed. 

Such a pity for him that Andrés had other plans. 

He drives them straight past his house, which earns a confused look from Martín. 

"What's going on?"

Andrés says nothing. He just smirks and drives on. A few minutes later, he hands him a scarf.

"Cover your eyes." He orders, and dammit, he's going to miss that sultry smirk Martín does before he puts it on. 

He parks, and leads him inside delicately, bar from one moment where he all but lets a door slam onto him. 

Once he has him in position, he turns the lights on, and tells Martín to take down his mask. His face twists into a smile of knowing, of understanding, what Andrés is trying to say here. What the gesture means. And he knows that Martín is doing his very best to not cry, because he's watched him do this for the last two weeks. 

"One last time?" Is all he says before he pushes Martín into the pool, jumping in straight after without even thinking about it. 

When they surface, sodden suits clinging to skin, Martín reaches for his face, bringing him into his hands. They remain there, lips a whisper apart, amid the water, beads of water disguising the tears that Martín would later probably claim weren't there, for what feels like days. They could just stay here forever, couldn't they? Forsake the rest of the world, and just be together, here, lost in the water. But the decision has already been made. They're just using up the last of their time. 

They swim. They race (if anyone asks, he let Martín win that one time), they splash each other, they pull each other close, floating. When he kisses him after he watches Martín perform a particularly awful underwater somersault, it feels like the last time. It feels final. He's resistant to let go, so he pulls him closer, tighter, as if it was even possible, hands grabbing at his sodden shirt, at his hair, at his neck, his cheeks, all suddenly slippery. He can't settle anywhere on him. It's like he's lost him already. Martín must know it too, because he kisses like he's never been kissed before, as if the air they share between them was the only one you were allowed to breathe, and-

Time doesn't stop, it carries on in spite of them. They encroach on the early hours of Martín's last day in Spain. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the sunrise creeping up out of the window, changing the light in the pool and everything it touches to gold. Their lips part, but he rests their foreheads together, and he can only hope that Martín understands, that he gets it. He wants to say so much more than he is able to. It's beyond words, beyond comprehension, the thing they share. 

He doesn't recall how they manage to get dry, to collect Martín's luggage from his apartment and to be on their way to their airport until he's fastening his seatbelt. It's slowly, but surely hitting him. Everything that he's tried so desperately to ignore. He can hold it off a bit longer, he knows he can. He has to hold it together for the both of them. Once Martín's gone (and what a terrible, but real and very near reality that is now) he can let it all out, he can-

"Andrés."

"Yes?"

"Can you be normal, please? You look as if you're driving me to be put down or some shit." He huffs a laugh out at that, because of course Martín can see through him. It occurs to him, then he never did get the chance to ask Martín if he could indeed read his mind, but it all seems so irrelevant now, because he's _leaving_. And Andrés is letting him. Because it's the right thing to do. Something bigger than himself. 

He's completely ready to bite back, to quip, to lighten the mood of the car, because let's face it, it's pretty bleak, but his mouth betrays him again.

"I'm going to miss you, Martín. More than I think I can articulate." 

It seems to surprise them both. It appears to shock Martín into silence for the remainder of the journey, until he's parked, and suddenly, they're _here,_ and this is _it_ , and -

Martín's thrusting a small box into his hands when he returns to reality. "Here. I got you a present. Just-open it."

And it's so funny, because why is _he_ receiving gifts at this time? He opens it, anyway, and a small metal pin sits happily within the velvet container. A _life ring._ He loves this man so much. 

"Well, it's because you saved me, you know-"

"No, Martín, I don't think you understand. You saved _me_. More than you know."

He kisses him crucially in that car, edging closer and closer to the finality, the separation. Somehow they manage to part, and to get the suitcases out of the car, and to step into the airport. Martín checks in, and it still doesn't feel real, he's surely about to wake up to Martín lazily laying all over him, talking softly in his sleep. 

They take his bags, and he's about to go to security, to the _plane,_ to Houston, to -

He pulls him into an embrace. He knows it doesn't communicate everything he wants to say, but it's a start. He pulls back just enough to grasp him the nape of his neck, meeting his eyes.

And he doesn't know what to say! Of all the words, of all the combinations, of all the phrases available, and he's coming up empty. Because none of it would ever do the man in his arms for the last time justice.

"Promise me," Martín says, and Andrés is _so desperately_ ignoring how much this hursts, because the next thing Martín says is, "Promise me that you'll leave the house. That you'll keep writing. That you'll be nice to your brother. And that you'll look after Ágata."

"I promise." He says, because he can't do anything else. Martín knows him so well. 

"Promise me," He then says, seemingly incapable of stopping himself at this point, "that you'll live it to fullest. That you'll make it worth this."

Worth the pain. Worth the twist in his chest. 

Martín gives a shaky nod. _Good._

"I love you, Martín."

"I love you too." 

"Give them hell."

"I promise."

He kisses him right there, in the middle of an airport, not caring, not even thinking, because he just _has_ to. When they part, he can barely see Martín's misty eyes through his own. He blinks it away. Not now. 

Martín reaches his hand to his own chest, over his heart, then places it, delicately, on Andrés's. He pulls it back, and steps back a few steps, his eyes unreadable, before a nod and a smile. He turns. Takes a few steps. Looks over his shoulder. Smiles. 

And then he's absorbed into the sea of people. People, who have a place to be. A destination. People who are moving onto the next place in their lives. Andrés has lost him to those people now. 

He waits there for longer than he'd probably like to admit, before finally returning to the car. 

It's frankly a miracle that he gets himself home safely, because he certainly doesn't remember driving at all. Some sort of auto-pilot. 

He makes it all the way home and through a shower absolutely fine. Just numb, is all. He's coping just fine, thank you very much. 

It's only when he sees a cat, _that cat_ , sat leisurely on his bed, that he finally breaks down. 


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one should probably come with another apology

February. 

The day after Martín leaves marks the first day of February. A new month. Clean slate. Fresh page of his calendar. 

He has to use more energy and effort than he'd like to admit to force himself out of bed, and then out of the house. But he does it. Not for himself, although he supposes that he is the one to benefit from it. He does it to upkeep a promise. He's understood the importance of that as of late. 

He takes a walk, just to mark the period of time as somewhat productive. The world seems quieter, more monochromatic, the air stagnant, the breezes flat. It's ridiculous, because the world surely cannot know. He knows the world hasn't changed. It's incapable of it. So it's him that different, then. Changed. For better or for worse, he's currently unsure. 

When he returns, he finds his hands eager to _do,_ to be busy, but his mind comes up blank. He sits in front of his laptop, and tries to edit a blog post here and there, but the words dance around the screen and before he knows it, he's slamming the screen down and his head's in his hands. 

Okay, so maybe he's not okay. 

He's got another week until he starts on the show. That's got to be enough time to get over Martín, to move on, to grieve (because that's the only word that seems to make sense), to carry on with his life. 

So, by midday on the first of February, he finds it completely acceptable to return to bed. Except he can't. 

Because there's a cat in his bed. 

He doesn't even know how the cursed thing keeps getting into his house. He must have left a window open somewhere, and he makes a mental note to check the security of his house again, as he's shooing the cat out of the front door. Again. 

It's barely even three hours until he wakes up again, the sensation of tickling underneath his chin. Hair. Soft. _Fur._

His barely awake awareness allows him to recognise that the cat is indeed back. He sits up, which somehow wakes up the his furry intruder. The cat looks up at him, and surely that looks like a smirk-?

He forces himself to take another walk. He must be going insane. 

It's possible, he thinks for a blinding moment, that the cat isn't even _there._

One day away from Martín, and Andrés has decidedly lost touch with reality. Outstanding. 

But lo and behold, as he returns an hour later, the cat is still there, stretched (in a way that surely cannot be comfortable) across his sofa. 

Is it some sort of cruel metaphor? A motif? Is there a strange sort of meaning that he's supposed to mine out of this cat's presence? Some sort of pathetic fallacy to recognise in his own life? 

He decides, after staring at the cat for forty-seven minutes, that he'd better speak to a real human being today.

Sergio, thankfully, asks no questions on their phone call, and appears at his front door in what feels like only a matter of moments later. 

"Andrés-"

"Come in, come in, brother," he ushers him in with an impatient wave of his hand, shutting the door behind them and then promptly pointing at the cat, eyes wide. "Can you see this cat?" 

"Why-yes, Andrés. I can indeed see that cat. What-"

"Oh thank _God_." So he's not crazy, but he definitely must look it, by the judging of Sergio's reaction. 

"Where did that cat come from, Andrés?" His brother asks, adjusting his glasses in the way he does when he doesn't quite know how to word the question he wants to ask. 

"I don't know! It keeps coming back! I can't get rid of it! Believe me I have _tried,_ " that must seem a lot darker than he intends for it to, so he quickly resolves it with a "not like that, Sergio." 

"So it's lost?" 

He spends the week before his new job starts finding the owner of said cat. It becomes a mission of sorts, a quest. It involves a small photoshoot with the cat (an hour and a half that he actually finds himself enjoying), then the making of flyers and posters, and then the posting of aforementioned flyers and posters around his neighbouring streets. 

He eagerly waits for the response of some bereft cat owner, thrilled to be reunited with their feline companion, but it doesn't come. So, in the meantime, he decides out of the pure goodness of his heart (and not at _all_ because it's the thing he believes that Martín would do) to keep the cat. He buys some things (although the at bed that he forked out a pile of money for doesn't go to good use, the cursed thing insists on sleeping in his bed). Gives it-him-a temporary name. 

"Palermo," he decides, remembering fondly a place Martín had been determined to take him to, back when- "You remind me of him, you know."

Irritating. Unrelenting. Stubborn. Loving. Methodical. Calculating. Attention-seeking. Special. 

All of those _amazing_ things he misses so much. 

March. 

He's a hit on the television show, because _of course he is._ The reviews are higher than ever before, the viewer engagement up, all of those fabulous statistics that the producers speak about in their own unique language. The show runs once a week, but they're already in talks to take on another slot or two in the scheduling next month. All because Andrés joined. And all because Andrés thoroughly gets a kick out of berating Arturo Roman on nationally-broadcast television. He cannot _stand_ the man, and very much makes that known when on air. And the viewers are lapping it up! Their rivalry has quickly become a feature of the programming, and the producers are now insistent on setting them up on topics that they just _know_ are going to set the two of them off. Denver's just there for the ride, it seems. 

It's March, and he's throwing himself into work to be busy. 

He writes more blog posts, more than ever before, even bringing his laptop to the studio with him, typing happily away as the runners politely ask him to get ready. It takes longer to post the blogs, though, he doesn't have anyone to edit them any more. Well, he's sure that if he'd asked, someone would help, but he'd rather just do it himself. No one would be good enough anyway. 

He's not spoken to Martín, since...

It had made sense to let each other have space as they separated, but this is _awful_. And worse? Completely his own decision. What a surprise. 

He takes it upon himself to become much more involved in Sergio and Raquel's wedding in July. The planning that they've undertaken so far, is almost laughable, considering that they already had a completely-planned wedding be cancelled already. He happily takes over, not that they are particularly thrilled to have him do so. 

It's March, and Martín isn't here, and Andrés has become a wedding planner. 

He's looking through different options for pocket squares for Sergio (although he insists he doesn't need one - such a naive man), when the man himself snaps his fingers between his face and the screen. 

"Andrés? Andrés!"

"What?" He looks up at his brother, confused. He's just looking for pocket squares on his laptop, as well as speaking into his phone his thoughts for the next blog post, so that he doesn't forget, of course.

"You're running yourself dry. Come on, take a break."

"What? No. I'm perfectly _fine_ , thank you very much, Sergio." He bites back. 

It's March, and Martín still isn't here, Andrés is being forced to go back to therapy. 

Sierra doesn't look too impressed to find him sat opposite her, but with the amount that (he can only assume, he lets Sergio negotiate that and just hands over his card) she's being paid, she still manages to click her pen and reach for her notepad.

"Andrés." She says, as if she's saying something groundbreaking. She writes something down, at length. He doesn't even care at this point. 

Is this a good time to mention that he had indeed requested a better therapist? Sergio had muttered something about this particular individual being the only one who would accept. _Ah._

"Alicia." 

"I'm not just going to do all the work for you, tell me why you're back here. I was quite happy to not see you again. In fact, I was rather thrilled by the idea of not se-"

"Well-"

"I'm going to stop you right there, because what I'm already seeing is a classic case of-"

"You didn't let me finish."

"Oh!" She says, hand to her chest, feigning offence. "Why don't you just 'carry on' then?"

"I'm being forced to come, I actually don't think I need to be here."

"Is that so?" She's interested now. 

"I think I'm coping just _fine,_ actually-"

"Coping with what?" 

Ah. She's got him. He hadn't missed these cat-and-mouse therapy sessions, but he's here now, and they've got all of -fifty-three minutes-left, so...

"Coping with life's never ending hurdles, of course. Such a cruel mistress, that one, life-"

"Tell me." And suddenly she's a different person. A schoolgirl, anxiously demanding to hear the latest gossip. 

"I fell in love." 

Well, he's never had a therapist laugh at him before. 

"You? I mean, you haven't swapped names with the Andrés that I'm supposed to know, because that is the most-"

"I knew this was a ridiculous idea." 

The woman opposite him is positively _cackling._ He is struck with the memory of why he fired her the first time. This simply will not do.

"We talked about this, Andrés! We agreed," and she's consulting her notes now, amazing, "in December 2019 that you were incapable of that!"

"Well, maybe I was wrong." 

Whatever expression is on his face is enough to make her relent. Slightly. "Go on, tell me which 'beautiful, but deeply intelligent' woman has the vast misfortune of being loved by you this time." 

"His name is Martín, actually." 

Her mouth falls open.

"Interesting. _Very_ interesting," she's flicking through her notebooks, seemingly invigorated by this piece of information. "In fact, this makes a _lot_ of sense." 

He rolls his eyes. 

"So where is he now?" 

"He moved to Houston, and if I'm being honest, which is after all in the spirit of therapy, he took a piece of me with him." 

"Wow. Love that. Do go on." 

April. 

He's finally allowed to resume his duties as wedding planner in April, under the strict condition that he only completes the tasks Sergio gives him. Which, so far, has been to source a suitable pair of cufflinks. Child's play, really, but he's determined to do a job so good that Sergio regrets ever taking back control over his own wedding. 

He's currently on the phone to a vendor specialising in vintage accessories that he's been negotiating with for weeks, sat in his dressing room with - _apparently_ \- ten minutes to go, according to the producer that he hates the least. 

"-no, I'm telling you, Eduardo, that I know the value of the cufflinks, and while I appreciate that you have a business to run, that I will not be paying above their value...no, I will not be purchasing the pocket watch as well! You know full well that it won't go with the outfit! This sounds like distraction techniques to me, Eduardo-"

"Andrés, come on, I need you dressed, like yesterday! Let's go!"

He covers the receiver with one hand as he says, "just one more minute, Melissa, I've nearly got him." He ignores her protests as he continues to get the price of the cufflinks down. 

There's a soft knock at the door, and if Arturo doesn't understand that he doesn't want to talk to him outside of filming, well that's his own fault. Andrés has frustration and energy, and it certainly won't end well for him. 

Melissa pulls the door open, and looks back at Andrés with a confused, "You know this guy?", As if the man stood on the other side of the door was just someone pulled off the street, as if it was someone, who against all odds had managed to get through security and strategise his way to get to the studio, to his dressing room.

"Andrés? You know who this is?"

He does. God, he does. 

It all happens so fast, and yet he's floating. He's not in the room. He's somewhere else. He can't stop the grin spreading across his face, the way his cheeks heat up, the way he can't quite breathe anymore. He can barely hear Eduardo on the speaker at his ear, asking where he's gone. He hasn't even answered Melissa, who is mere seconds away from calling security for the man on the other side of the door. 

She doesn't need to. 

Because it's April, and Martín's here. 

He mutters out a feeble, 'I'll call you back' to Eduardo and tells Melissa that there is in fact, no need for security to be summoned, and that yes, he'll get changed, and that yes, he knows he's only got five minutes. He'll promise anything at this point, just to get her to leave. He's got something- someone- else on his mind right now. 

She goes. 

He can barely stand. The room feels electric, energy reverberating off of the walls. 

"Hello."

"Hi." It sounds like coming home. Which is odd, because _he_ hasn't come home, he hasn't even moved for the last few minutes, but a piece of him has indeed come home. 

"Close the door behind you. Now." 

Martín apparently takes too long to do such a task, because it's a matter of seconds before Andrés is pressing him into the door instead. He can't resist. Martín gasps into his mouth, the sound soon muffled as their mouths meet again. It's rough, it's fast, it's _not nearly even close to being enough._

"Five minutes, you say?" Martín speaks into his throat, reacquainting his lips with the skin that has missed the contact so very much. "Well, we've done worse, but I _am_ a bit jet lagged, so-"

He's pulling at the buttons on Martín's shirt, which are not releasing nearly quickly enough, for god's sake. "When-how-why are you here?"

"Do first? Talk later?" 

It sounds like a very sensible offer, so he returns to the dastardly task of the buttons. He's -this- close to just tearing them off, when he asks, "You didn't get fired, did you?"

Martín's laugh is _delicious._ He's missed that. God, he's missed him. More than he can put into words. More than he himself is able of understanding. 

"God, no. They love me there. I'm amazing." 

_Oh no._

It's like Martín's skin is burning him. He releases him instantly. 

"What-"

"You have to go." 

"Andrés, what-"

He's pacing, shaking out the energy that he was only moments ago, so eager to put to good use. "You really have to go, Martín. You can't be here." 

He's been selfish. Foolish. How did he let it go this far? 

"I don't understand, Andrés, love, please-"

"Are you enjoying it? The job. Houston."

"Yes. Yes. Why-"

"Then you can't be here."

He's moving to the door, ready to pull open the door for Martín, since he seems to be unable to listen to the very clear instructions being given to him. 

"Andrés, what is going on?"

"If you're happy, and it's going well, then we're only torturing ourselves by doing this."

"I came back to see _you,_ Andrés. I wanted to see you. The job's great, really amazing, but-"

"Then that's all I need to know. Thank you for the visit, but it really is time to go."

A hand slaps over his own, stopping him from opening the door. Martín has that fire in his eyes. The determination. The unwavering spirit. 

He doesn't want to fight. Not with Martín. 

"I'm not leaving. Not until you tell me what's going on," Martín says, voice level and calm, quite the opposite of what Andrés is feeling. "I miss you like crazy, Andrés. None of it matters to me if you're not with me. None of it. I don't care. I need to be with you. I came here to-"

"No. Nope. Just let me-" He's pulling at the door, certain that if he just pulls a little harder, he can get Martín to leave, then he won't have to deal with all of these _feelings_. 

"Aren't you miserable?" 

That gets him to look up. And finally, he sees Martín. Tears sitting unshed in his eyes, breathless. 

He knows what he wants to say, and it takes everything in him not to. Instead-

He knows what he has to do. 

"I don't know what you're talking about, Martín." 

"I think about you all the time. What you're doing, how you are, if you're well, which poor soul you're bothering. If you're thinking about me," then, crucially, " _do_ you think about me?" 

"I've been too busy to think-"

"You're a fucking liar, Andrés!" His voice is louder now, the tears beginning to fall. He pushes at Andrés's chest, breathing deeply, erratically. This isn't what he wants to do to Martín, quite the opposite, but it feels like the only choice. "Are you happy?"

"Yes. I am." 

A lie. The worst he's ever told. 

"Without me?" Martín's voice is small. Awful. Heartbreaking. This is vastly worse than the airport. And that had been like a thousand deaths, all at once. He'd have happily died there, if to not experience this moment. 

The silence wraps up all around him, coils, tightens, suffocates. 

"Without you," He confirms. Martín's face is falling in front of him. He's releasing his hold, relinquishing the fight. "I'd recommend that you don't come back here. You need time to heal."

Martín chokes out a laugh at that. "Yeah, right. Don't worry, I won't come and bother you again."

Andrés has to swallow past the lump in his throat as he straightens up, opens the door and steps through. Oddly, he feels nothing. Nothing at all. This can't be good. He can already feel himself slipping, but he tilts his chin up, and becomes someone else. He has to. "Now, if you don't mind me, I have a show to do."

He closes the door behind him, straightens his shirt, takes a deep breath, roughly wipes at the wetness on his face (which isn't supposed to be there _at all_ ), snapping viciously at the intern trying to put his microphone on. 

It's April, and Martín's here, and-

He staggers onto the set, fired up to embarrass Arturo Roman on national television, just to feel _something._


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!!!!
> 
> I'm so sorry it's taken a while, but I really wanted to get these last few chapters right for you all! 
> 
> Big love x

May. 

It's the end of May, and Ágata is still somehow ignoring him.

He doesn't particularly blame her, per se, but it's not ideal. It would (not that he'd ever admit this, _to her face_ ) be nice to speak with her. Catch up. Make fun of Bogota's feeble attempts at cooking. Compare notes on the swim style in old Olympic recordings. Whether he liked it or not, they were friends, and had been for years. He felt her absence in his life. Well, he'd felt more than just _her_ absence in his life as of late, but he's trying not to think about that.

He'd even tried to call her. _He'd_ tried. In a horrific turn of events, he'd picked up his phone, dialled her number, and waited for her to pick up. He'd even left a message. _A message._

She's punishing him. And if he's honest, he totally and utterly deserves it. Except, he's been punishing himself enough since April. He didn't really need her disapproval too.

Amid the heartbreak he's been trying to ignore, it's the constant convincing of himself that he's done the right thing that's been exhausting. He wants to believe that he was right. That this wasn't for nothing. That he could give up Martín, give up what they'd shared together, and give him to a new part of the world, a part that needs him, it will all be worth it. As long as Martín was happy. The sacrifice would be worth it. Maybe it was because he felt indebted to the man. The feeling that he'd never really, truly, be able to repay him. Sending him to Houston, accepting the job offer on his behalf, severing contact, seeing him and rebuffing him, all in an attempt to give him a life, a happiness that he so desperately deserves.

The thing he hadn't expected, after that day in the studio, was that he'd be in this much pain. That realisation came later, but he was painfully aware that he hadn't just hurt Martín. He'd hurt them both, potentially beyond repair. He'd never even considered that Martín would come back to Madrid. It hadn't been part of the plan. But there he had been, and Andrés panicked. Did what he thought was best. What a surprise. 

In spite of the pain and sheer emptiness that has characterised his own existence since April, he stands by his decision. Martín deserves the world, deserves the fucking moon and stars, and if there's even a possibility that in Houston lies the secret to Martín's fulfilment, then Andrés cannot, should not, will not, stand in the way of that. If indicating to Martín that he was unaffected by their separation was what it took, then that's what he'd had to do. 

So Ágata's ignoring him, punishing him, for rejecting Martín. And Andrés knows he deserves it. But it doesn't make it easier.

It's by accident that they meet, it seems, one beautiful and bright (not that he's paid attention to that sort of thing for a while) May morning. He's replacing the posters of the cat (no one, no one on the face of the Earth seems to own that cat), severing the black plastic cable ties. Andrés is convinced the cat will have more luck being claimed if the pictures are more recent, more representative of Palermo. Maybe it's excessive, but it's something that he can have control over right now, and hey, it doesn't hurt anyone. And it at least gets him out of the house. 

Since that day at the studio-

Things have not been good. Okay, things have been _awful._

But if he can find the rightful owner of the cat, and reunite them with the rambunctious little terror he's been looking after, then that's an achievement! A good thing. He needs something good right now. 

He's pulling out new posters, with a more recent (and rather well-taken, thank you very much) picture of the cat when he hears a woman cursing down the street. 

He's not in his own neighbourhood today. He'd started branching out in his search for Palermo's owner, reading somewhere online that cats can travel quite some distance when lost. He keeps his focused fixed on the cable ties, threading the tapered end through the fastener. This isn't his side of town. Who knows what the etiquette is for swearing in the street? He's not too interested in finding out. He tells himself that he can just put up this final poster, and then get in his car and go a few streets over, and -

He recognises a particular string of curses. He doesn't even need to look up.

It's Ágata. 

Amazing.

She's stood on the other side of the road, jabbing her finger into her phone and looking frantically around. Her eyes fall on Andrés. 

"You are fucking kidding me," he hears her say under her breath from across the street - so maybe not quite so under her breath and hidden at all, then- as her eyes meet his. "What are you doing here, Andrés?"

He holds up the poster, as if it's an acceptable form of answer, and then shrugs neutrally. "What are _you_ doing here?" 

She sighs, pained. "Well, I think I'm in labour." 

"Fuck." 

"That's what I said! It's early! But it doesn't matter anyway because my stupid fucking husband won't pick up his phone and-" 

She seems to have forgotten about the silent treatment she was so insistent on undertaking. He doesn't know whether that was a blessing or a curse right now. 

"Sounds to me like you're in quite the predicament there, Ágata. Shame -"

"Andrés." Her eyes are pleading. That's probably the best he'll get. He knows he's going to help her. He'd be incapable at this point of not being able to help. 

She nods over to his car, the Figaro, and-

"No. No way."

"You cannot be serious, Andrés. It's just a car." 

"No. I'm putting my foot down. It was bad enough when-" and all of a sudden he can't speak, can't even utter Martín's name out loud into the world. That's new. Outstanding. That's a problem for later. " _someone_ threw up in it after your gender reveal."

"Well, how do you suggest we get to a hospital then, idiot? I don't have my car."

So that's how he ends up driving Ágata to the hospital in his beloved car. He kindly refrains from advising her to not ruin his leather seats, deigning it not quite appropriate in the present context. 

"I'm still not speaking to you, Andrés." She says at one point during the journey, punctuated by sounds of discomfort. He never considered himself a particularly religious man, but does slip a quick expression of gratitude to any god that will listen for making him a man who could not be less interested in having children. 

He just nods in response. He's not thinking about that right now, or at least trying to. Most, if not all, of his focus is currently placed on the task of getting her to the hospital in one piece. It would be terrible form to kill them both right now. 

But the woman to his side isn't letting up. "Because what you did to Martín was so-"

"Has it occurred to you," He says in a low voice, lips pursed, "that it wasn't fun for me either?"

That shuts her up for a moment. That, or another contraction. 

"Then why - _ah, fuck_ \- did you do it?" 

"Is this not a conversation for another time? One in which, perhaps, your newborn child is about to fall out of you into my vintage car?"

"That's not how labour works, idiot," she says, voice strained. "Why, Andrés, why would you send him back like that? It's like you're determined to be unhappy." 

Determined to be unhappy. Huh. Maybe he should fire his therapist again.

"I made the right decision. He needs to move on. It's for the best." 

"You're a - _oop_ \- coward. I thought you were being selfless and romantic when you let him go. But he came back! For you. Not for me, not for anyone. He came back for you. Because he missed you. He was ready to call off the job he loves and move back to Madrid. For you. Did you know that?" 

He didn't know that. He'd assumed, but something twists within him to hear it confirmed. Part of him cannot believe that they are having this conversation while she's in this state, but after nearly a month of silent treatment, it seems like all bets are off.

"And that's why I had to do it." 

She's silent for a moment. And he's not sure whether what he'd said had touched her, or whether it was the labour, but she looks over at him now, with a set of new eyes. And the eyes are sad. 

"Well, then the question remains. Was it worth it, Andrés?"

It's the first time since that day at the studio that he can't quickly convince himself that it was. 

Somehow, they make it to the hospital safely. Some sort of a miracle, really, if he's considering the lecture that she decided to give him about love and decorum between contractions. She's quickly whisked away, funnelled into a wheelchair at the entrance. She shouts over her shoulder an order. To get a hold of her husband. 

He has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. His job was over! He would have been more than happy to go back home, to eagerly await the poor soul who's been missing their cat for the last five months. 

But instead, he's stood in front of a hospital and he's making calls. After the initial embarrassment at realising that he in fact does not even have Bogota's number, he recruits Sergio's help, who, inevitably, is able to make contact with the man in all of forty-five seconds. 

It's another twenty minutes before he finally sees the man pull up to the hospital _on a motorbike_. He cannot even fathom the reality that this man will soon be a parent. 

Bogota, who had apparently been getting a massage when all of this chaos was happening, simply claps Andrés on the shoulder and saunters in. 

"Aren't you coming, Andrés?" He hears distantly, and he turns to see Bogota waving him over.

"I'm not-" He doesn't even know what he's trying to communicate. Not invited? Not qualified? Not-

"Shut up. You're family. Come on, let's go!"

Well, he can't really argue with that. 

He patiently waits outside, wishes he'd brought a book, or at least his laptop. He makes conversation with an elderly woman awaiting a hip replacement. Before he knows it, his presence is requested in their room, and there's a baby in Ágata's arms. 

She looks ethereal, if a little tired, and she somehow _smiles_ at him as he enters. It seems that all is forgotten. For now. 

"Come here," she says softly. "meet Ibiza."

"That's the worst name I have ever heard." 

"I hate you, Andrés." She says, but she's stifling a laugh regardless. Over her shoulder, Bogota is hiding his laughter, and he's suddenly very sure of who named the child. 

It means something, to be involved in such a moment like this, to be trusted. Maybe all is not lost. 

He sits with them in that room for a while. They talk comfortably, and it feels nice. Maybe Bogota had been right. He has family here, in this room. These weren't just people that he knew. And that meant something, didn't it? It's possible, that he's not quite as alone as he tends to think he is.

He's got the job of keeping Ágata company while Bogota gets food, when her phone rings. She reaches for it and all but squeals as she answers, pointing the phone to her face. A video call, then. 

"Ágata, it's like six in the morning, what-Oh my _God!_ " 

He knows that voice. The tinny receiver of Ágata's phone releases the voice out into the room, where it swirls around Andrés's head like confetti. He's stunned, for a moment. He's not sure why he's quite so surprised to hear Martín on the other side of the phone right now, but the hairs on his arms are standing to attention, his breath caught, stuck, in the middle of his throat. So much for severing contact. 

"This is Ibiza." Ágata says softly into the phone, angling her daughter towards the camera. 

"That is the best name I have ever heard." 

Everything inside Andrés is on fire. He doesn't know what to do with himself. How are people normally supposed to stand? He has to talk himself down. All Martín can see is Ágata and Ibiza. Martín doesn't even know he's in the room, he's safe, he's-

"Andrés, come hold the phone, my arm is tired and I just gave birth to a human." 

So much for that, then. 

Thankfully, his legs respond, and he's able to walk over to her bed and pick up the phone. He's a man of principles, and a man who is stubborn, and often unfeeling and cold, and he's a man who realised that he did indeed have the capacity for real love, and also the strength to let it go. 

But he's also a man who cannot resist. He turns the phone over, and there he is. 

The twisting feeling in his chest is back.

"Andrés." The phone says, and yes, the twisting feeling in his chest is _very much there_. 

Even in the semi-pixelated resolution of the screen, he can see him. Hair slept in, eyes just as blue as before. 

It's a good thing he's in a hospital right now, because his chest is really not complying right now. 

He remembers with a start that he couldn't even say Martín's name earlier, so safely delivers a 'hello' into the phone. Martín's face is unreadable, his expression restrained. This is weird. It shouldn't be this weird, right? 

"What are you doing there?" Martín takes the step for them. Andrés is grateful, words seemingly absent every time he opens his mouth to try and speak. 

"I had to drive Ágata to the hospital. In the Figaro." 

" _You_ drove? In the _Figaro_?!" 

And it's only for a split second, a fraction of a moment, really. Nearly missable. But Andrés doesn't miss it. He wouldn't be able to even if he'd tried.

That smile. That grin. 

And it's so ridiculous now to think that he'd been so ready to give up on them. Love isn't a switch, something to be turned on or off at will. How easy it would all be if he'd been able to do that. To send Martín back to Houston, and to turn off his own feelings. To make it a clean break. To turn everything off and to ignore any resulting feelings. And yet, since that day in the studio, all he's been able to do is feel. To feel love towards Martín, and heartbreak as a result of his own cowardice. He's feeling now. Feeling something that feels oddly like regret. 

He'd been able to tell himself that the sacrifice he'd made on behalf of the both of them was worth it, as long as Martín was happy in Houston. But it's surely a form of torture to be apart like this. 

He's made a mistake, hasn't he? One that he might not be capable of resolving.

"It might be for the best at this point if I burn the Figaro. It's been through quite a lot, it seems. Drunken escapades, labour-"

"That was one time, Andrés!"

June. 

For a man getting married in a matter of weeks, Sergio is rather calm. With everything organised, booked and purchased, all that was left to do was to have the big day. 

Oh, and to write the vows.

"Do you think 'blouse' and 'vows' rhyme enough?"

Andrés had been so focused on typing the latest draft of his upcoming blog post about the benefits of goggles, that he admittedly, had not been listening. But the word 'rhyme' is enough to snap him out of productivity.

" _What_?! Rhyming?! No, no, no!"

He spins round in his chair and viciously snatches Sergio's notebook from out of his hands. 

He has to stop himself from audibly groaning too much as he reads through Sergio's proposed speech. It's positively awful. 

"You simply cannot use the words 'calculated risk' in your vows, Sergio. That will not do."

"What would you suggest, then?" Sergio quips, prising the notebook back into his possession. "No rhyming?"

"Absolutely no rhyming," Andrés agrees, leaning back in his chair to think. "Vows are like poetry, yes, but no rhyming. Be passionate, speak from the heart about love. Speak about your excitement to be bound together forever in holy matrimony." 

He can see Sergio holding back a rebuttal about the divorces, and Andrés decides to give him the opportunity to continue to hold it back. 

"You've written these before, Andrés. Can you give me line or two to just put in? I don't want Raquel to think I don't care, but also that I-"

He decides to take pity on his poor brother. Never has been a man able to wield the power of words at will. He tries to recall what he'd said about the large, massive subject of love at his first wedding, a lovely little analogy he'd written the night before his first nuptials. He also tries to remember the exact wording of a line in his second wedding's vows, something about flowers- 

He realises suddenly that love, the love he knows now, could never be described in such smilies, could never even match the feeble metaphors and comparisons. 

He stands. He does have to get ready for the show, after all. Thirteen minutes until showtime to be exact. 

"Love is-" He starts, and finds himself unable to even word the rush of sheer emotion that washes over him at the thought of the love that Martín had opened him up to. 

"Love is what?"

He sits again. Getting ready can wait for a moment. 

"I should have gone to Houston with Martín."

It feels overdue to admit, but it's the thought that he's skated past and avoided for months now. He'd made a few mistakes, admittedly, but this was certainly one of them. 

"What?"

"I should have gone to Houston with Martín," he repeats, the words settling even heavier this time. "Or, I should have at least been selfish and made him stay here. With me." 

Sergio doesn't say anything for a moment. He doesn't even pretend to look busy to avoid the inevitable awkwardness he normally feels when people talk about emotions and feelings. He just stares Andrés down, apparently unsure of what to say. 

"You've been miserable ever since he left," Sergio finally says, and Andrés cannot do anything other than nod. "And you've tried to avoid slipping down like before so much that you haven't let yourself heal."

He's definitely firing his therapist. 

"And here's the thing, Andrés," Sergio continues, his hand softly coming up to grasp at his shoulder. The touch is warm. "I've never seen you happier than when he was around. Even before it became romantic. You lit each other up. Even if it was insufferable most of the time. Actually, you were rather annoying together most of the-"

He pulls his brother into a hug. 

"I love you, Sergio." 

He gets ready, and assures Sergio that he is in fact capable of writing his own vows. 

Martín's on his mind again (and honestly, when is he not?), so much so that he barely pays attention to the start of the show. He doesn't even know what topic they're discussing this week. He nods along to whatever tangent Denver is going along, before his attention is piqued by Arturo. As always, for the wrong reasons.

"-no, but like, why does it have to be said? Like we get it, you're gay. Can you just take your medal and go?" 

The audience is split at that, the responses just sounding like noise in Andrés's ears. He knows what they're talking about now. A sprinter at an athletics championship won gold, and in their exit interview had used the opportunity to speak for LGBTQ+ rights. Andrés had seen the video on the news last night. He'd been touched by it more than he'd like to have admit. 

The time seems to still, the voices of the audience subsiding. He sees Arturo across the table, chest puffed out, heat radiating off him in the way it does when he's exhilarated by being controversial. Denver, further across the table, chewing at a pen, staring at Andrés, awaiting his response.

It seems there's a choice to be made here. Martín briefly crosses his mind. He makes his decision without even blinking. 

"I found the footage rather moving, actually."

"Oh, did you now, Andrés? How _lovely._ " 

He turns to the audience, makes eye contact with a few of them as he speaks again. "Well, it's no secret that there's a homophobia in the sporting industry, is there? What this athlete did last night was remind us that there's still more work to be done. More conversations to be had," He says, voice levelled, as he turns back to the table. "So, if it's alright with you, gentlemen, I think we should talk about it."

Denver nods eagerly, "Cool with me, bro. I have lots of gay friends, and my cousin-"

"And say what? I mean, it's fine with me if people are gay, I just don't want it plastered all over my TV."

Andrés settles his shoulders. He's ready. 

"What's the problem, Arturo? What exactly is unsettling you about an athlete, a _winning_ athlete at that, publicly sharing his experience of a homophobic industry that you work in?"

"N-nothing," Arturo bites out, eyes narrowing across the table, "you're trying to make me look bad here, aren't you?"

"Nothing of the sort! Just highlighting that the sporting industry is cold, caring only about numbers and statistics. It's an industry full of _people_ , people with their lives, people who don't just leave their lives at the door when they run a race." 

"What are you-"

"At my last competitive race, all those years ago, I was deeply unwell. I nearly died that day, and the next, and the next. I was unwell for years. It was not enjoyable. I was sick and I missed doing what I loved. And did you contact me during those dark days, Arturo?"

"Yes, actually I-"

"Oh, yes, I nearly forgot! You emailed me asking for an interview for your television show."

The crowd reacts to that in a way that feels victorious, but he knows he's not done yet. Arturo leans over at him, fingers pointing wildly.

"I-I-What has that got to do with the gay kid?"

"Everything," he says firmly. "I made the mistake of not being vocal enough about my illness when it mattered. What this _athlete_ did last night in that interview might be enough to give others courage to come forward and live in the sporting industry more authentically themselves."

The room is silent. In the corner of his eye, he can see the team of producers watching him, horrified. Waving frantically to get his attention, to stop him talking. Fuck that. He's not finished. He stands. He swallows before speaking again.

"I hate the sporting industry. It needs a complete overhaul, it needs fixing. The industry didn't support me when I was unwell, and it continues to not support those who need more representation. And in fact, I can't work on a show that doesn't agree with that. I won't work with people who share your archaic views, Arturo." 

Arturo's spluttering now. "You, you-"

"What would you say if I told you that _I_ was in love with a man? Hm?"

He watches Arturo's jaw fall. He'd do it all again just to watch that happen. Glorious. He doesn't wait for a response before he opens his mouth to finish it all. 

"I'm done here," He says to the camera, before turning back to Arturo. "And you know, you should try it, Arturo, I've had the best blowjobs of my life-"

Someone calls for commercial. 

He stalks off the set, pulling his microphone out of his jacket, ignoring the chaos around him. It's only until he's about to close the door to his dressing room behind him that he realises that Denver's with him.

"I just quit too, man!" He holds his hand up, in requesting a high-five. Amazing. Maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's the electric energy all around them, but he indulges Denver and raises his hand. 

He's calmly packing a bag of the items he'd left in the dressing room for the five months he's worked here. He doesn't feel anything other than triumph. Denver, somehow, is still talking. 

"I mean it's so cool that you're gay now, Andrés. Who's the lucky guy?"

Andrés nearly drops a bottle of cologne. The day that Denver gains another brain cell will be a good day for humanity. "Martín. Obviously. I mean, seriously, how did you not know that?" 

"No fucking way! I mean I knew he was like madly in love with you, but damn -"

Sergio bursts into the dressing room with a face that oddly doesn't look furious. 

"Were you not going to discuss quitting the programme with me at all?"

Andrés shrugs. "It just came to me in the moment." 

And he's not lying. He hadn't woken up today with a determination to quit or be fired from his television job, but here he was, packing his bag in his dressing room. He'd been taken over by something bigger than him, something he was currently incapable of understanding, but he'd just started speaking. It had felt essential. The right thing to do. 

He hears a groan from his brother in response, head buried in scrolling frantically on his phone. He must be scouring social media for the impacts. 

"Go on," Andrés drawls, zipping his bag with an air of finality. "What's the damage?"

"No, no, actually it's pretty good," Sergio says, apparently surprised. He's scrolling with a smile on his face now, his eyes meeting Andrés's with something that oddly looks like admiration or something. "They're calling you a gay icon."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." 

July. 

It's been a week since he quit the show. His life has taken another shift, his routine changed yet again. But he's not mad. He feels a sense of peace, a there's a calmness about him. He's been busy enough, visiting friends, listening to Sergio and Raquel's panic about their wedding next week. He's been writing, and to a wider audience this time. He writes more candidly about his experiences in the sporting industry, and invites guests, old colleagues, to write features too. The website is taking off.

He's become rather fond of the cat, too. Against his better wishes, there's an understanding that he's been able to develop with the feline. Sometimes Palermo will look over at him, and it's like he's reading right into his soul. 

And sometimes, he's convinced that Palermo has the spirit of Martín in him. 

It's worse now that he's admitted to himself that he'd made a mistake with Martín. The heartache burns deeper, words read heavier and music sounds sadder. The love he'd found didn't leave when he severed things with Martín. In fact, it's hard to even imagine a day when he would be able to not love Martín. That thought scares him more than any other. 

He'd been so confident in his attempts to not be selfish for once, but it seems that they'd backfired.

Maybe it's time to be a little bit selfish again. 

He's typed the number into his phone before he talk himself out of it. 

"Andrés? Why are you-"

"I miss you," he says, the words tumbling out of him before he can stop them. He's learned, recently, that sometimes it's best to not think first. "I miss you so much."

"What are you even saying right now? I thought you-"

"I was wrong. I was wrong about all of it. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was protecting us, but-"

There's a sigh on the other end of the line. 

"Hold on." 

And then he hears movement, doors being opened, footsteps on stairs, and then the sounds of an outside spilling into the phone. He hears something that sounds a lot like a lighter, and-

"Martín, are you smoking?"

"Since you ended things, I have never smoked so much in my life, you son of a bitch. And cigarettes are so much more expensive here! It's not fair."

He doesn't like the thought of that. He swallows.

"I'm sorry."

"For what? The smoking, or the-"

"All of it."

There's silence on the call for a moment. 

Martín speaks next. "I saw you on the television show. It was...amazing, really. People are calling you a hero. Well, you _are,_ but, like-"

He lets himself smile at that. "I think the term was 'gay icon'. There was one article which referred to me as a 'bisexual king', which I rather liked the sound of."

His room is filled by the sound of Martín's laughter from his phone. It's soothing.

"So."

"Why are you really calling, Andrés? What do you want to happen?"

He takes a breath. 

"I want to be with you. If you'll have me."

He hears another sigh. "Fuck, Andrés. I...I can't keep up with this. You don't want me, you want me, then you don't want me, and now you want me again?"

He knows. Oh god, he knows. 

"I-"

"Andrés, I'm supposed to be presenting like right now, I really can't-"

Andrés finds himself sat back down on his bed, hand running through his hair. This isn't what he'd expected. Not that he'd really gone into this phone call with a plan at all, but _still-_

"Then I'll make this quick. I love you, Martín. And I lied to you. I've missed you more than I can comprehend. More than I could understand."

He hears Martín sniff. He makes a noise which sounds a lot like a sob. "I-fuck. The presentation. I have to go. I'm sorry, Andrés. But we'll continue this conversation, okay?"

"Yes." He says automatically, clinging to the promise of a future as if it was gold.

"Good luck with the presentation, Martín."

"Thank you," Martín says softly.

Then it's just the sound of the disconnected line that fills Andrés's bedroom.

He can't stop the grin that spreads across his face. 


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the one I've waited so long to write!
> 
> Hope you enjoy xx

He's surely watched Sergio put on his cufflinks about fifty times by this point. It's becoming insufferable. Out of kindness for his brother and his big day, Andrés had 'happily' obliged to obey the fourteen-page itinerary that Sergio had drafted for his wedding day. He hadn't exactly been _thrilled_ to wake up before six o'clock, but it was listed in the itinerary, as well as a shower scheduled in a whole seven minutes later. Andrés hadn't taken an extra minute in the shower intentionally, but it had been particularly entertaining to watch his brother nearly have an aneurism at the realisation that they were behind schedule before they'd even had breakfast. He'd foregone the orange juice (not of his own will) in order to get them back on track. 

He reluctantly peels himself away from his armchair to put Sergio out of his misery, threading the cufflinks through his shirt with ease. 

It's now 11:52. They're ready. The ceremony doesn't start for another three hours. Outstanding. 

"So, what's next on the agenda, Sergio?" He asks his brother in his calmest tone, pulling his brother's suit jacket sleeves over his shirt. A feeble gesture, seeing as they do indeed have three hours. He returns to the armchair, where he intends to stay for the remainder of their three-hour wait.

"I have to go."

He nearly falls out of the chair. 

"What? Go where?" 

"It's in the itinerary. I have to pick up Raquel's cousin up from the airport." 

"And you couldn't do this before you put your bespoke suit on? Airports are filthy." Andrés often finds himself baffled by the antics of his brother, but this is on a whole new level. 

Sergio holds up the itinerary as a form of answer, fetches his keys, and is promptly out of the door. Andrés barely has an opportunity to ask what he is supposed to do in the meantime. 

It's fortunate, he realises, that Sergio had insisted that they'd get ready at Andrés's house. He sees from the other side of the room Palermo, stretched out on the windowsill, soaking in the sun, eyes closed in what must be a cat-only bliss. He'd give a lot to feel that right now. 

He's excited for today. Poor Sergio and Raquel had already had their wedding cancelled once, and all he wanted for them was to have a seamless and enjoyable day. They deserved it. Plus, he'd get to see a lot of his friends all at once, and there will be alcohol, music, and food. The promise of a good day looms. 

But he can't ignore the small raincloud that hovers over his head. After their phone call, Andrés had waited eagerly to continue their conversation, however difficult it was going to be. He'd been ready to apologise, to explain, to make plans, to buy plane tickets, to speak face to face, to make promises, vows-

But the phone call never came. And it had been seven days since then. He'd agonised over whether to make a follow-up call, to send a text, to do anything, really, but then the days continued to go past, and the communication had continued to stagnate. 

Martín was always on his mind. The house felt less and less like home each day he lived in it alone. 

It felt essential by this point for them to be together again. He had been excited to discuss logistics, to make decisions. With Martín this time. He'd taken quite enough action on their behalf. And he didn't know what the future held for them, and whether it even involved them being together at all, but he'd be damned if he spent another day living without Martín in his life. He'd be damned if he spent another day without taking action to get Martín back into his life. 

He draws his forefinger across the rim of his phone, contemplating. By the time he's psyched himself up enough to dial the number, the disappointment he feels as it goes to voicemail feels like a tidal wave. 

He leaves a message regardless. 

He'd made his move. He's now just waiting for the response. What he'll say at that point? He can deal with that later.

Or now. He could think now. He does have three hours after all. 

He settles in his chair, making sure he's plenty comfortable for the thinking. 

He's still and silent for four minutes until he's decided that he can't think in this house. He's in the car and driving by the time he realises what he's doing, but somehow, his hands know where he needs to go, steering decisively.

When he finally steps into the swimming centre again, the messiness in his head already seems a little clearer. Maybe it's the smell of chlorine. It's empty, thank goodness, and when he steps out towards the pool, the serene stillness of the water calms him further. 

Curse the bespoke suit. Sergio's at an _airport_ , so Andrés can carefully unlace his brogues, roll off his socks and delicately place them inside his shoes for safety before folding his trouser until it sits at his knee. 

He lowers himself onto the edge and slowly slips his legs in. The addition of his legs to the pool disturbs the water, ripples releasing and then eventually fading out, until the water seems to accept him. His arms rest on the edge, and, yes, now, finally, he can think. 

It's funny, but he's sure that he can see himself at the edge of the pool, watching a version of Martín standing on the edge, moments away from falling in. And then he can also see himself edging his toes hesitantly into the water across the pool, and another version of Martín attempting to somersault underwater. He can see himself with his face in Martín's hands, faces edging closer and closer together. He can hear Martín's laughter from the changing rooms. He can see a version of the two of them, grasping onto each other, mouths desperately together, reluctant to let go. This pool is filled with ghosts. This pool is filled with the memories of two men saving each other, teaching each other, and then falling for each other. 

And to think that he'd been so afraid of the water. To think that he could have carried on, living a desolate excuse for a life. To think that he wouldn't have been able to have any of this. It would have been easy to carry on in the way he was living, living quietly in the shadow of his illness, and yet here he is.

He'd been so afraid to live. He's afraid now, but it's different. Or is it? 

It's fear he feels. Fear of it all working out, fear of everything going well. The fear that if they're able to rebuild together, and to make it work, then surely, nothing can get better than that. The fear of losing _that._ The fear of losing something he hadn't even given himself the opportunity to have. 

It makes sense. He'd sabotaged the future himself to prevent the world from doing it anyway. Whether he'd been aware of it or not, he'd been afraid of something coming along and ruining everything. His illness had come out of nowhere all those years and destroyed his career. He'd been blindsided by it. To have everything he'd worked hard for taken away and changed, it had been a shock. It's possible he's still recovering from that blow.

The water at his feet feels still and safe. It's time to not be afraid anymore. Martín had once told him that it was never too late to have a life, and he remembers wanting to believe him. When they'd been together, he'd believed it. He'd lived, and he'd lived in a way he'd never lived before. He'd separated the two of them in the hopes of keeping them safe for a larger, more inevitable pain. He'd been foolish, and wasted so much time. 

But it's not too late to have a life, is it? 

He pulls himself to standing. 

He feels more settled on the drive back to his house. Something feels like it's shifted. He's no closer to knowing exactly what he'll say when they next speak, but he knows what he wants, and that seems like good enough for now.

He's surprised when he returns to the house that Sergio hasn't yet returned. Palermo has moved, not by the window anymore. Instead the little cat is at his legs, looking up at him with a knowing gaze. How does the cat know? Impossible. He hesitates only for a moment about getting hair on his suit before scooping him up and carrying him to sit with him in the armchair. They sit there comfortably for ages, awaiting his brother's return. It's hard to not have Martín on his mind as the wedding gets closer. He'd previously imagined that they'd attend this together, laughing together at Sergio's panicked antics. There's something about weddings that always makes one think of love, and today, it was at the forefront of his mind. Eventually, Palermo appears to get bored and leaps off of the chair in search of something new. It's not long after that before Sergio bursts in through the door, frantically flicking through his binder. 

"We are in a mayday situation, Andrés!" His eyes are wide, glasses askew, and he's somehow lost his bowtie since he left nearly two hours ago. "We are _very_ behind."

Andrés stands up, confused. How can an airport pickup have gone _that_ wrong? "What happened?"

Sergio's not far off hyperventilating, now using the binder to fan himself. "It's all wrong. I have to call off the wedding, can you get a hold of Raquel? Everything's ruined."

"What? What are you even saying, Sergio?" 

"He, ah-her cousin," Sergio stutters, pacing around the room. Andrés has definitely seen his brother in panic mode before, but he had taken quite a few measures to ensure that he didn't see this on his wedding day. He wonders how easy it would be to slip him something in a drink. For relaxation, of course. "the flight from H-H-Havana, it's been delayed. Hours, maybe."

"What's the problem, Sergio? Last I remembered, Raquel didn't really care for her cousins. You can get married without one cousin. We'll send a taxi for the kid. I'll pay for it, I don't care. Let the poor jet lagged soul come to the reception and be done with it," Andrés says smoothly, in a tone as comforting as he can muster, "Now, how about I fix you a little drink, eh?"

He's already pulling out glasses when Sergio speaks again. "No! No, you don't understand. It's...oh god, I-" The man is beyond words at this point. Not good. 

"What's really going on here, Sergio? We're not behind on the schedule. We've got another hour before the ceremony. You just need a little sprucing up, and we're good to go!"

Sergio opens his mouth, desperately trying to articulate whatever is going on his peculiar mind. Andrés gets the feeling that this is more than just about not being able to secure a distant cousin of his soon-to-be wife. 

"It's not just about the cousin." 

Bingo.

"I need to make a call, Andrés." 

He watches Sergio slip out the front door, phone in hand. Odd. It doesn't need to be that secretive. 

Once he returns, Andrés leaves the glasses and elects instead to pull Sergio to sit down for a moment at the sofa. The man desperately needs a rest, that much is apparent. 

"Okay, so what is so awful about today that you simply cannot get married, hm?"

Sergio makes a few noises before his words decide to return to him. "It's about you."

Oh. Okay.

"What about me?"

"Fabien, _the cousin_ ,he was bringing a present for you."

Well, this is just getting weirder and weirder. 

"A present?"

"Raquel saw something on Pinterest about grooms getting their best men presents on the wedding day, and I spent months - _months, Andrés!-_ trying to find the perfect thing for you. You're very hard to buy for." 

Andrés lets himself chuckle slightly at that. 

"I am. You're right."

"I knew I was leaving it last minute having Fabien bring it, but-" Sergio adjusts his glasses, taking a deep breath, "It feels like it's a bad omen for it to go wrong."

He pulls his brother into a tight embrace. "It's not a bad omen. You're getting married today, brother." 

When he releases Sergio, he's happy to see that some of the colour has returned to his face. "Come on, we'd better get you cleaned up. You have airport all over you." 

As he's fixing Sergio's bowtie, he finds himself unable to resist asking. "What was it, then? The present? Vintage bottle of wine? A new scarf?"

Sergio shakes his head, suddenly all evasive and bashful. "No, no. If you have to know, it was a book." 

"A book? You must know there are books right here in Madrid, brother." 

Sergio laughs a little at that, finally in a state that can no longer be labelled 'panic stations'. Good. It's finally time to travel to the venue. Andrés had been kind enough to not refuse when he saw that his car had been volunteered for the occasion. Of course. 

He's nearly out the door when he remembers. 

"Hold on, Sergio. I've forgotten something important." He darts back into the house, moving quickly so as to not forsake the itinerary more than he has to. He doesn't have to search for it. It's been set at his bedside this whole time, where it was safest. Where it could be close to him. 

He fixes the pin to his lapel, and is thankful that Sergio doesn't say a word at his return. 

When they arrive, there's already a gaggle of people eagerly awaiting the festivities. It's nice to see. He sees a lot of familiar faces. People he recognises as Sergio's associates and colleagues, and people he can vaguely recognise as Raquel's family. 

There's no family bound by blood for him or Sergio here today. But he can already see Monica and Denver waving at them, and he can see Bogota (with Ágata oddly nowhere to be seen) finding a place to sit, with baby Ibiza strapped securely to his chest. It would be wrong to say that they had not family here today. 

And as he'd intended, the venue had been decorated to perfection (he'd had a hand or two in selecting some of the flowers for the arrangements), with the ornate interiors of the hall complimenting the colourful attire of the guests. He could only feel pride when he looked at the room where his brother was soon to be married. The promise of a good day had returned. 

Sergio stops by a group of people that must be Raquel's more distant family, and Andrés takes it upon himself to introduce himself to the ones he doesn't recognise as Sergio speaks softly (which must mean he is rather excited) about the day ahead. 

"Hello, Andrés. It is lovely to meet you," one man says, delivering a strong handshake. "my name is Julian, I'm Raquel's uncle." 

The man, Julian apparently, gestures to the man at his right. "And, this here is my son, Fabien. He's Raquel's cousin."

Interesting. He shakes Fabien's hand, intrigued to find that it doesn't have a book in it, and further interested to find out that the two of them in fact live no further than Barcelona. They hadn't even travelled by plane to the wedding. Very interesting. 

He waits patiently until Sergio is finished talking, and until they take their places at the altar before he begins the interrogation. He stops himself for a moment, to wonder whether it is fair on Sergio to barrage him with a set of questions, but soon talks himself out of that. 

"Raquel's family seem nice."

"Oh, yes, very nice." Sergio agrees, fiddling with his cufflinks. 

"I introduced myself to a rather lovely member of her family. I believe his name was Julian."

He watches Sergio pause and swallow thickly before he says. "Ah, yes. I have met him once before. A true gentleman. Good handshake."

"A very good handshake," Andrés agrees. "And I believe I met his son too. Although I forget the name. What was it? F...Florian? Oh, no, I remember! _Fabien._ "

"Spare me, Andrés." Sergio says, his face stoic. 

"No harm done, Sergio. I'd just like to know where you were for all that time earlier, if it wasn't in pursuit of transporting a guest to the wedding or getting my present." 

It's at that point that Ágata emerges through the arch, wearing a rather fabulous satin emerald number. She nods over to Sergio as she moves down the aisle and Andrés could swear that he hears his brother sigh in relief at seeing that. He even sees his brother's shoulders relax. He looks calm now, happy. What?

"What is going on, Sergio? What was that?"

"Nothing, Andrés."

Ágata holds up her hand to the two of them, palm outstretched. Five. What does five mean? Five more people? The hall is pretty full. The attendants are already preparing to shut the doors for guests. And it can't be about time. There's fifteen minutes until the ceremony starts. That makes no sense. 

"Okay, so what was _that_ , then, Sergio?"

"Nothing. Leave it, Andrés." His brother bites out. 

"Fine." 

They stand there in silence, terrible form for a wedding, really, but he's furious. He doesn't enjoy being out of the loop. After all they'd been through, everyone still wants to keep secrets? Fabulous. Sergio had once admonished him not not being trusting enough. What utter nonsense. The next time he even dares to mention anything like that, Andrés will be all but raring to bring up this particular event. 

He's got his eyes on his brother, wondering if he can feel the glare he's sending him. Somehow, it doesn't look like he can. Because Sergio's smiling. Odd. He's grinning. Very odd. Raquel's not due to walk the aisle for another seven minutes, what- 

He turns his head to find what Sergio's looking at to see someone emerging underneath the floral arch. 

Andrés's breath catches in his throat. 

It's possible that he's dreaming right now. Maybe he's dead, and somehow, in spite of it all, he's made it to the pearly gates of heaven, because surely, Martín cannot be here right now, standing at the other end of the aisle. Impossible. It must be an out of body experience of sorts, because this isn't happening right now. No way. 

He comes back to reality to hear Sergio grumbling next to him. "I specifically told him _not_ to wear white." 

"It's ivory." Andrés says, correcting him automatically. 

He barely even think straight. Martín looks amazing. Ethereal. Beautiful. There's a glow about him that warms something deep in Andrés's chest, that sends electricity through every fibre of his being. The man is _shining_. His blood must surely be made of gold. Surrounded by the flowers, he looks as if he's walked straight out of a painting. Everything possible rushes through Andrés, excitement, guilt, apprehension, but above all, love. God, he couldn't be more in love right now. Truly horrifying, really. 

His eyes suddenly register the book that Martín's holding. And suddenly it all makes sense. 

He ignores Sergio's protest of 'ivory's worse!' in favour of turning to him.

"Did you do this?" He demands, hand on his brother's shoulder.

The little shit next to him just squares his shoulders and smiles knowingly. He loves his brother. 

He turns his attention back to Martín who is making his way down the aisle. 

Their gaze is loaded. How could he possibly communicate everything he wants and needs to say to Martín right now? He's rooted to his spot at the altar. He smiles over at Martín, whose face is unreadable. 

He points to the pin on his lapel instead of trying feebly to send the man signals through facial expression. The metal of the pin is cool under his fingertip. He wonders if Martín understands what he's trying to say, especially as he's not really sure what he's trying to say himself. Other than a declaration. An admittance. An exclamation. Above all, he's aware that it's a question. _Are you here for me? What does this mean? Are you here to make this happen? Do you forgive me? Love me?_

Time seems to linger and stretch excruciatingly as he awaits any sort of response from Martín. A sign. Something. Anything. Please.

Just before he sits beside Ágata, Martín has the audacity to grin widely at him and to hold the book's front cover up for Andrés to read. 

_'Thermodynamics for Dummies,_ written by Martín Berrote.'

Unbelievable.

He hates him. Except that statement is a total and utter lie. 

He adores him. So much. It's becoming apparent that he's incapable of doing anything else. 


	24. Chapter 24

The ceremony is going perfectly. Or, it isn't. He can't really tell. People have laughed, or they might have cried. Maybe. No idea. 

It's possible, that it might have been a mistake for Sergio to pull such a stunt with Martín on his own wedding day, because at present, Andrés has no memory of the wedding itself at all. Embarrassing, really. His focus currently lies somewhere between the blue pools sitting a few rows back on the left.

"Andrés?" Sergio's voice breaks him out of the lucid haze of warmth surrounding his head. When he turns to look at his brother, Sergio looks frustrated, albeit a little amused. 

"Hm?" 

"The rings, if you will."

_Ah._

After that, he tries to pay a little more attention to the proceedings, but it's proving difficult. Martín is _right there!_ And it's not as if he's watching either. His eyes are just as much fixed on Andrés's. After all this time, after everything he's put the two of them through, it feels almost dangerous to break their gaze. He's got to make up for lost time somehow. It feels as if they converse over and over just through the eye contact, a million conversations that had never been finished, let alone even started. 

There's so much to say. He needs to speak with him. It almost feels as if the world may just simply end if they don't speak immediately. 

He realises, as the cheering starts, that his chance is looming, and also that his brother is now _married_ and that, probably most importantly, he too should be applauding. 

He waits until Sergio and Raquel have left the hall together, towards the photographer, before he darts to the seating area. The grin on Martín's face only widens as he approaches, and it gives Andrés a burst of something - courage, maybe? 

He's only able to say the words, "Martín, I-" before he's interrupted. There's a hand tapping on his arm. It takes all his willpower to be polite and turn to deal with whoever _dared_ to interrupt this essential moment. He instead sees his lovely niece looking up at him, beaming.

"It's time for photos, tío!" She tugs at his sleeve slightly, and he has to stop himself from groaning. He'd been this close! He turns to Martín, who is stifling laughter. 

"Later." Martín promises, a hand coming up to his shoulder, squeezing. 

He lets Paula lead him to the photos. He doesn't even have to be asked to smile. The wide grin on his face hasn't faltered since Martín walked underneath that arch. The excitement, the promise of 'later' lingers in his mind. When Sergio looks at him, he doesn't even know what to say, or where to start. He has so many questions, expressions of gratitude. He figures, though, that the least he can do at present is to comply with the photos as requested. And, if he's feeling generous (which he probably should, considering the sheer gravity of the gift Sergio has given him today) he probably should comply with the rest of the wedding itinerary. Unless, of course, there's a scheduled half hour of '15:43 - Martín and Andrés kiss and make up'. 

Andrés desperately wants to ask about how the entirety of Operation Martín was carried out, but Sergio looks rather preoccupied. He'll ask him later, maybe, but it seems that he already has a date for 'later'. 

It's possible that this is the most fun he's ever had at a wedding.

The photos seem to take forever, (if Sergio had let him keep his role of wedding planner, he might have been able to secure the happy couple a more efficient photographer, but whatever) but he keeps good on his word and stands where asked and looks to the camera when instructed. He spends the time wondering how to quantify 'later'. A few hours? That feels like a rather long amount of time. The tension has already built to a point at which Andrés is convinced could kill him. Except it doesn't. And he makes it through the photos alive.

When he finally sees the photographer putting away their camera, he knows that he's a little bit closer to 'later' and that sends another wave of excitement through him.

Sergio turns to him, smiles, and says fondly, even if a little exhausted, "Yes, Andrés, you can go."

At that, he feels it only fair to prove Sergio that he wasn't just playing nice at the photographs in order to have it finish sooner (although he totally was), to not break into a sprint, and instead to walk calmly back to where all the guests are congregated. 

He had forgotten that other people might want Martín's attention too. Monica and Denver are engrossed in a conversation with him, laughing and beaming at each other. The man, as always, is the centre of attention, arms gesturing wildly. Andrés adores him. He's theorising the best way to interrupt and steal Martín away, and wondering if it can be done all in one smooth motion, when Ágata intercepts his path. 

"Andrés," she says in greeting, smile devious. "Funny. It's Sergio's wedding day, but you look the happiest of all. I wonder why that is?"

He knows she'd had something to do with it. It's natural that she'd want to be involved anyway, plus she hadn't been subtle _at all_ earlier. 

"Tell me," he says, eyes flitting over to Martín to see him still animatedly telling stories to Denver, who has his eyes wider than what looks humanly possible. He must be telling him stuff about space again. He has so many questions about Operation Martín, and he searches his vocabulary for a string of words that sounds eloquent and inquisitive enough, but instead comes up with, "How did this happen?" 

Ágata chuckles softly, smile knowing. "You didn't think that Martín wouldn't tell me about your little phone call, did you? The man was sobbing down the phone, full of all sorts of emotions, and I just knew you needed to be together to sort this shit out. But I have a _baby_ and shit of my own to deal with. I felt it was my civic duty to hand over the task to Sergio, and leave him in charge of logistics. I was on backup, in case anything went wrong with the pickup. After the flight's delay, I got the call, and I went to pick up the precious, precious cargo. But really, it was all Sergio. You're insufferable when you're heartbroken, he was just doing us all a favour."

He owes them all a great debt. One day he might be able to express his gratitude. Maybe. 

"You won't mess it up this time, will you?" Ágata asks. Andrés shakes his head. 

"I'll do my best." 

"I'm rooting for you two. Always have been," she says with a wink. "Now, do you need me to get rid of Monica and Denver?"

He can't help himself. It must be the wedding, and the all the emotion of the day, and - 

He pulls her into a hug. And she has the audacity to laugh at him in the embrace. She truly is a good friend. Horrifying. 

As she pulls away, he watches her find her husband and to offer an exchange of baby carrying duties. The woman is a genius, he thinks as he witnesses Monica all but squeal at the sight of little Ibiza, and thus dropping her hold on Martín's shoulder. 

The coast is clear. 

Gliding through the sea of people is easy, slipping between the human obstacles seamlessly until he's at Martín's side. He wants to touch him, all over, to engulf him, to -

He settles for a neutral hand at his forearm. The touch, electric, of course. He doesn't know why he's surprised, but he feels himself flush at the sensation all the same. 

Martín's eyes meet his. Magic. "Hello." 

"Hello." 

"How were the photos?"

"Fine," he shrugs, the whole experience suddenly irrelevant to him now that he's got Martín, right here, in front of him. Amazing. "Your suit is quite the work of art."

"You could say that I learned from the best."

Oh, this is dangerous. 

Martín opens his mouth to speak again, but promptly closes it again. It's peculiar how easily they're able to fit back into their own rhythm, but still with so much to say between them. There's a comfort within the interaction, spiked with a chasm of the unsaid, and it's an unsettling mix. 

"We have a lot to discuss."

Martín laughs. A beautiful, beautiful sound. God, he'd missed it. To think he'd been so ready to give it up? Atrocious behaviour. It's possible he'll never be able to forgive himself for that. But that's for another time. 

"We're not doing a business deal, Andrés," he says through chuckling, "but, yes, I suppose there's a few things we should probably talk about. Do you want to-?"

"Yes," he says, already pulling Martín into the hallway. It's quieter out here, less prying eyes. This is for them. It's theirs. "So, I should probably start."

Martín already looks like he wants to interrupt, true to form, but presses his lips together, meeting his gaze, ready to listen.

"I am very happy to see you, Martín. Here. Today. It's-" He's already losing control over words. Amazing. For a man who prides himself typically on his composure, it's not easy to find himself choked up, flustered. But he can just tell that Martín is _loving it._ Bastard. 

He takes a deep breath, settling himself. He has so much that he needs to convey to the man in front of him, that it all just wants to come out at once. 

"Martín. I made a mistake. Well, I've made a few, but I...I should never have given up on us. It was cowardice, yet again, keeping me from pursuing you, it was-"

The door behind them is flung open, to reveal Bogota followed by what seems like _all_ of the guests. 

"It's food time, boys! Let's go!"

Andrés wants to _scream._

"Where are you sitting?"

"With Monica and Denver, I think."

"Oh, for fu-"

"Later, Andrés?"

He sighs. This is going to be a long day.

"Yes. Later." 

He forces himself to enjoy the meal and to enjoy the moments at hand, finding it far too easy to attempt to live in 'later' time. Judging by his memory of the itineracy (and thank goodness that Sergio made him commit each time stamp to memory in advance of the big day), he's got the meal, the speeches, and the first dance to survive through before he's even _close_ to have another chance at speaking to Martín. 

He tries his absolute hardest to join in the conversation at his table with Sergio, Raquel and her mother and daughter, but he's not perfect, and if he contemplates the possibility of bribing a waiter to send a message to the man in the ivory suit a few tables over, well that's _his_ business. But he is absolutely capable of having a good time, and so he does. 

It's only when the waiter he thought most likely to accept bribes swans past their table and provides them all with champagne that he remembers violently that it's time for the speeches. A set of speeches that involves one delivered by _him_. Oh. 

He suddenly regrets insisting that his speech come first in the procession, making grand claims about the speech which currently sits, folded up neatly in his jacket pocket. He slides it out, delicately unfolds it, and briefly reminds himself of the words he'd written about love weeks ago. Words he'd written in a very different time. A bitter little thing, scrawled in his worst handwriting, stained with wine, and heavy with the weight of being so deeply morose about the situation he'd placed himself in. 

Sergio had asked him to write something beautiful, something meaningful, something about 'love'. These words didn't even come close. The eyes are on him now, most of their ears already having been subject to one of his speeches at a wedding before. His reputation with grandeur statements of love precedes him. That simply will not do. So, without any further acknowledgement, he folds the paper back up, slides it back into his blazer, meets Martín's eyes briefly, and begins to speak. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, and _Denver_ ," he gets a laugh at that. Good start. "I'd like to extent my personal gratitude to you all for coming today. It's no secret that Sergio and I have no real remaining blood relations. A fact that often crosses my mind. However, I know that today we are surrounded by family. And _Denver_."

"Hey!"

He ignores the interjection. As far as he's concerned, it will probably by the first of many. "Sergio, our dear groom today, asked for my services as best man, and that does come with a package deal for a speech. Demanding as my brother is, he asked that I speak of 'love', which is lucky for him, because I-"

"Yeah, yeah, we get it! You've been married before! Next one!" Curse whoever provided Ágata with alcohol tonight. 

"No, no," he shakes his head fondly. "Well, it's true, I thought I did know of love through marriage, through strings of women, and really there were quite a few-"

"Andrés." It's a miracle that it's only taken until now for his control freak of a brother to intervene. He meets his brother's eye, gives him a nod that he hopes is (but knows most definitely is not) reassuring, and continues to talk. 

"But I was wrong. That hadn't been love. It had been adoration, admiration, a fondness for beauty. Love is more world-defying than that. I didn't know that kind of love existed, that it was something for me to find. It was Sergio who showed me what love was supposed to be. Throughout our lives, we've been looking after each other. However, the balance of that relationship is often a little off. The truth is that, most of the time, it's him looking after me. I have a million debts owed to my brother, most of which I won't go through right now, as I'm sure you'd all like to get to the dancing, but one of them, maybe the most important, is that I know what love is because of Sergio. In my darkest days, Sergio was the only one by my side. The only one that I would let in. During all of that time, where I thought it was to be over for me, in spite of it all, he loved me. And he showed me what love looked like through his relationship with Raquel. They showed me, showed us all, what it was supposed to be. What it was supposed to look like. So, when I finally found a love of my very own," his eyes, in yet another act of betrayal to the rest of his body, find Martín's. It's like magnets. He can't help himself from doing anything other than deliver the next words to him. "when I finally found that true, real, earth-shattering love, I was able to recognise it. And it was _terrifying._ " 

That gets another laugh. Across the room, he can already see Monica dabbing at her eyes. The speech isn't _that_ good. He's barely even finished. "So, I found love, and I learned a few things about it. The main one being, is that it's like swimming. It-" he hadn't thought that line had been quite so funny, the guests all but howling, but he pauses for the laughter, considering it with a cocked eyebrow, and carries on regardless. "When they teach you to swim as a young child, it's all about sink or swim, no? I'm looking to our friends in the industry here now. Sink or swim, right?" He waits until he has a few nods from the people he recognises before proceeding again. "We teach the child that when they jump into the water, it's sink or swim. It's succeed, and survive, or meet a certain watery death. It's standing at the edge of the pool, and knowing that either you'll be welcomed by the water, or absorbed into it. And we teach the child that the goal is to swim, to survive, to succeed. We know that love is sink or swim in a similar way. Standing on the edge...not sure whether to jump in, in fear of not knowing if you'll survive it. That you'll jump in, hit the water, and swim. Or sink. Our dear guests, the most peculiar thing that I've found about love is that there's something quite special about sinking. There's courage to be found in standing on the edge, knowing that sinking is a potential option, and then jumping in anyway. Because, at the crux of it, there's such joy in that first moment of hitting the water. I'd choose to sink every single time just to feel that joy, even if it's short-lived. I'd drown every single time. That's love. That's what I've found about love."

When he musters up the courage to let his eyes find Martín's again, he finds them misty. Or maybe it's his own. Oh dear. Better wrap this up. He turns back to his own table, to where the bride (whose eyes also look rather compromised) and groom are looking up at him expectantly. "To my brother, Sergio, I owe you a lifetime of thank yous. For everything, really. To Raquel, I also owe you a lifetime of thank yous, mainly just for taking him off my hands. I love you both dearly." 

He raises his glass finally, and as the guests are repeating the words of 'to Sergio and Raquel, to love', he can't take his eyes off of Martín, whose glass is pointed at _him_ , who is repeating the word of love to _him._ The room suddenly feels a lot stuffier, warmer. His collar is rather tight (has it been this tight all day?). He needs to speak with him. To say the words he's danced around for months. The words that Martín deserves. The words that are true. Judging by the smile tugging at Martín's lips across the room, he might already have an idea, but that won't stop Andrés. There are declarations still to be made. 

To the side of him, Sergio is telling the very familiar and entertaining story of how him and Raquel had met, all of those years ago, which is shortly followed by a brief poem Raquel wrote about Sergio. A poem that has the whole room in stitches, a poem that has Andrés wiping tears of laughter out of his eyes. And then they're standing, and moving over to the dance floor, taking each other in arms for their first dance. The guests are moving to be closer, to watch, and Andrés can see Martín draining whatever was left in his glass and moving over to join the crowd. 

His skin's on fire. He needs to be closer. Making his way over to Martín is more difficult this time, guests stopping him, clasping at his arm to compliment his speech. He's not rude, so he stops and chats, entertains the compliments, before moving on again, only to be stopped by another admirer of his words. He has to make it through five vastly inconvenient incidents of guests pandering to his ego. If the situation wasn't quite so dire, he would have stopped and perhaps rather enjoyed the barrage of admiration, but at present, Martín is standing _just there_ , only a few people over, surely, and this 'Tiffany' whose in front of him, telling him how much his words about love meant to her, and he can't be rude, so he keeps eye contact, but Martín is _just there_ , and she's finally giving him a nod and a smile and turning back into the crowd, and finally, finally, he can turn his head to find Martín again, and he's _not_ there, and oh god, he just has to-

"I taught him well, don't you think?" 

"Very." The words are dry on his tongue, which is in vast contrast to how easily they had come to speak of love, _their love_ , in front of the entire room of people only moments ago. 

Martín's eyes are on the couple dancing in the centre, smile knowing. Always knowing. Andrés takes the moment to watch the couple dancing for a moment as well, enjoying how surprised Raquel looks at Sergio's near-virtuosity in dancing that he has somehow been able to keep a secret from her. The lessons had been worth it. 

He watches Sergio dip his wife, sees her eyes widen in joyful surprise, feels the crowd of guests around them react in hollers of excitement, but his voice is low as he says, "You'll save a dance for me tonight." 

"Will I?" Martín's eyebrow is raised, eyes still on Sergio and Raquel, but he's smirking. "I'm afraid you might have to get in line. Lots of people here want my attention tonight." 

He allows himself a small laugh at that, Martín clearly having no idea how difficult it has been to get him alone today. He takes a breath. He has a chance here. 

"I missed dancing with you." His voice barely even sounds like his own as it comes out of him. Why is it harder to speak now? "I missed more than that, in fact, I miss every single thing about you, but especially the dancing. Being close to you."

Martín's silent after that for a moment. He watches him inhale, watches him think, watches him consider his options. 

"I hurt you." 

"Yes." Martín agrees with a smile that seems to only hold fondness. This man. He'd give everything in the pursuit of dedicating the rest of his life to understanding him. 

"I hurt you, and in doing so I hurt myself."

"Yes," Martín agrees again, as if it had been as clear as day to him all along. Maybe it had. "Andrés, your speech, it was-"

Around them, there's soft clapping as the dance in front of them concludes. "I love you so much that it scares me."

The applause swells and continues around them, couples now moving to dance themselves. He feels people brushing past, to join in the music, as Martín finally turns to him. Ever since they'd met, all that time ago, something had sat between them, and now, it consumes him, fills every part of him. He'd like to imagine that Martín's expression was unreadable, however it's anything but. It's so open, it says everything. It holds relief at the validation, the ache of everything past, the hope for something in the future. It's beautiful. 

Just when he thinks Martín is about to respond, to say something naturally, effortlessly poetic, he does something even better. 

He offers his hand. 

The breath catches, gets caught at the very top of Andrés's throat. He'll always marvel at the physical affect that the other man has on him, especially as someone who prides himself upon his cultivated state of composure. 

He reaches out, and his fingers barely skim Martín's fingertips as Martín gasps and draws his hand back, as if being burned. He's confused, stung slightly, but only for a brief moment until he can see the dark red liquid out of Tokyo's wine glass cascade down Martín's suit jacket.

This is slowly becoming some sort of nightmare.

How did she even get invited? He hadn't seen the stumble that she'd taken, so at present, he's not entirely inclined to believe that it was accidental. Although he's sure it was. She's grabbing at his sleeve, retrieving a napkin to dab at the fabric, sincere apologies falling out of her mouth as she desperately tries to make a stained ivory suit jacket look, well...just as stained, really. She's terrible at the clean up. 

"Hey, we'd better get to the toilets. We can save this. I just know it." She's tugging at the sleeve, and Martín's eyes are apologetic.

"Later." Martín whispers; another promise. 

And then they're lost into the crowd, and Andrés finds himself yet again unable to speak to Martín. Does the universe hate him? He needs air. He'd only been to this venue once before on the tour that Sergio had insisted on 'for health and safety reasons', but he did vaguely remember a balcony that connects to the hall. 

When the air meets his skin, finally, it is admittedly a little easier to breathe. It had been a long, tumultuous day. His energy levels laid somewhere around the exhaustion mark, but energised by the excitement, the promise of Martín. 

There's surely space in the rest of the evening for the two of them to talk, properly this time, not in fragments and not through riddles and indirect speeches. He can see the grounds from here, the light illuminating the gardens. Behind him, he can distantly hear the music, the volume swelling and then growing quickly quieter as someone opens the door behind him, joining him on the balcony. 

Raquel. 

"Andrés," she says in greeting, reaching into her dress and retrieving a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He takes one wordlessly when offered, and says nothing as she lights them both, watching the smoke dance out into the night. "Are you having a good time?" She asks, smirk obscured by the smoke. 

He wondered what Sergio would think if he could see them like this. In part because he knows for a fact that Raquel claims she hasn't smoked for four years, and in part because it's their own fun little game to hide their friendship from him. It's more fun for them to pretend that they barely like each other in front of him, and then to have these familiar, comfortable moments away from his prying, excitable eyes. It would give him far too much satisfaction for him to know that they actually were rather fond of each other, and that's exactly why they hide it. 

"This is the best day I've known for a long time." He says, trying to place the last time he himself had smoked. It's not an often occurrence, and it mostly happens in Raquel's presence, but there is something grounding to it, something that he needed right now.

"Good," she says with a soft smile, knowing. "Me too." 

"I do love him, you know." He says casually, raising the cigarette to his lips again. 

Raquel nearly laughs. "We all know. Idiot." 

Well. 

"I don't know if I've ever told you this," she begins, the tone of her voice promising something more than he might be able to handle. "Sergio's known Martín for years. They met at Ágata's birthday party, the first year you were unwell. He'd just moved to Madrid. Martín tried to hit on Sergio, drunker than anyone I'd ever seen, it was hilarious. Ágata turned to me and just said, 'I miss Andrés. He'd love him, you know', and I thought she was right. You really would have hit it off with him straight away; you would have loved that night. Sergio and Martín somehow became acquaintances after that, I always found them playing chess, and I just always remember thinking how odd their friendship -if you could really call it that- was."

He's more surprised at that than he lets on. He'd always wondered about the extent to which they'd all known Martín before they'd finally met, he just hadn't imagined it had been that long. Raquel takes another drag and continues. 

"And I always wondered what you'd have thought of him, this man who became a part of all of our lives while you were away. I watched him at dinner parties, and could only think of whether you'd have laughed at his stupid jokes. I watched him play chess with Sergio, wondering if you would have been sat there too, bothering them both. Everyone just missed you so much, Andrés," she says, voice cracking more than she'd normally allow in his presence, but today seems to be a special occasion. "I would never have thought he would have been the one to save you, but it made so much sense."

He barely even wants to think about what his life would look like now if they hadn't met. Martín had indeed saved him. 

"The first time I saw you together, I'd come to pick Paula up from space club, and just as I was getting into the car I saw him leave the school, bag in hand, and walk to you, where you were leaning against your car. And I watched both of your faces just...light up."

It's only as the tear hits his hand resting on the balcony's railing that he realises it had fallen in the first place. He looks at Raquel, eyes full as well, and he slides closer until they're shoulder to shoulder.

"I don't entirely know what to do." He admits. It's a lot for him to say, the thing that he's put such effort into ignoring. It's his instinct to have an answer, to solve the problem, and here? It's not settled. All he knows is that he wants Martín. Needs him. 

"You don't need to know. You'll figure it out. Together." Well, that seems perfectly sensible. He breathes out, full of air this time, the cigarette long burned out and forgotten. 

"My life is here, but it's also there, with him. Wherever he is. Wherever he will be."

Raquel hums. "I must admit, I am rather fond of having you around. If you tell anyone that, _especially your brother,_ no one will find you. But you know, I wouldn't be opposed to visiting you in Houston."

"I hear it is rather nice out there this time of year."

"Indeed," Raquel nods, knowing. "Oh! One more thing. Sergio organised the flights for Martín, and it was my job to organise a hotel room for him. I think....in fact, I _know_ that I completely intentionally 'forgot' to do that. A shame, really. I suppose he'll just have to stay with you." 

Andrés just laughs. He loves his sister-in-law.

When he finally returns to the hall, his instinct drives him to look for Martín. It's not long before he sees him, leaning against the bar, speaking to Denver, suit jacket nowhere to be seen. He all but strides across the room to him, barely even acknowledges Denver, and grasps Martín just the forearms. 

"We are dancing. Now."

Martín throws his head back slightly and chuckles. "Is that so?"

"I don't care if a meteor falls out of the sky and destroys the entire building. We are dancing. Nothing else will keep me from you tonight."

Martín's eyes grow wider, impressed. Or, at least too surprised to respond. He lets Andrés guide him to the dance floor. Their arms find their places, the touch, the sensation comforting, familiar. He feels Martín laugh against him. "You didn't think you were leading, did you? Cute."

Martín shifts his hold, until he is indeed leading. Andrés hardly finds himself in a position to argue, so he'll let himself have this one. The closeness is intoxicating, their chests close, nearly together, and yet nowhere near close enough. 

"Is this a good time to mention that I knew how to dance the whole time?" Andrés smirks down at him, waiting for the reaction. 

"Oh, I knew that. The whole time." 

Andrés nearly gasps. The audacity! Martín takes opportunity to spin them, pulling him even closer. Brilliant. Their steps, fluid, in time, but hardly in his awareness, because _Martín._

"You think know quite a bit, don't you?" 

Martín hums into the embrace, clearly enjoying the leadership. "I know some things." He shrugs. 

"I need you, Martín."

"I know." 

"Stop it. Just let me-"

"I thought we agreed that I was leading, hm?" Martín's smile is bold. It's delicious. "You've spent all day trying to apologise to me, to tell me...I'd like to take the lead now, please."

Andrés presses his lips together. He'll let him speak. 

"Andrés, I..."

"I thought you were going to lead."

"Shut up! I _am!_ I spent that whole plane ride thinking of how to convey how I feel, of what to say, spent the whole ceremony thinking of what to say, spent the entire meal thinking of what to say, and now...I just..." 

"Words are such pesky things, are they not?"

Martín eyes spell confusion. 

"Martín...sometimes it is actions that are much more communicative, don't you think? Go on, _take the lead._ " And he understands. Of course he does. He's given him permission. His hand removes itself from its safe space at his waist and slides up to cup his jaw. 

Martín takes the lead and leans in. 

And, oh, how he'd missed these lips. Soft, uncertain, unsure against his own, slowly gaining confidence, bravado, until they're suddenly not dancing anymore, both of Martín's hands cradling his face. When he pulls away (and so soon too), he settles his hands behind his neck, Andrés's arms finding his waist accordingly. The dance is more of a sway now, a lazy transferring of weight from foot to food, but it's somehow even better. Their faces are barely apart. He can see all of him, see into him. Glorious. 

"Have you been _smoking?_ " 

"I-"

"I am scandalised, Andrés." He's laughing. They're both laughing. 

The silence falls again. Time to be brave again. 

"I love you." It seems like the best place to start. The only place. He punctuates it with a kiss of his own. 

Martín's face all but melts. "I love you too." He says with that smile of his. 

"I really am so-"

"Shush," Martín says, tone soft. He kisses him to stop him speaking further. He'd missed that. "I've had enough of apologies. I'm rather satisfied that you regret your actions."

"I do."

"Good." 

"When do you have to go back?" 

Martín's face twists slightly. "Tomorrow night. I have a presentation on Monday," he says, looking down slightly, lips pouting. "But we have tonight."

He holds him tighter. "We have tonight." He agrees. 

"Then let's make it _fantastic."_

They can do that. It's not long before Martín readjusts his position and leads them into dancing again, swirling around the floor, the live music of the band soaring through their embrace. He laughs at Martín's excitement at leading, and thoroughly enjoys his petulance as he regains control (a tactical kiss might have been used) and leads them through a few songs. It's a battle, one with two winners. 

The night draws to a close, people beginning to take their leave. He doesn't have it in him to let go just yet. They continue to dance, ignoring the exhausted looks from the musicians. They're the only ones remaining on the dance floor now, the music irrelevant, really. All that's in his head is just, Martín, Martín, Martín. And what a lovely thing that is. 

Ágata and Bogota stop past them. He deems it a good enough reason to peel himself from Martín. It would be rude to not give them a good goodbye, after all. As Martín and Ágata speak furtively in their own embrace, he approaches Bogota, who has little Ibiza cradled in his arms.

"I need a favour. A rather large one," he says. Unsure of when he even made the decision (somewhere between the impromptu tango and the seventeenth kiss on the dance floor surely), he pulls out a pen, a bit of paper, writes quickly the important components of knowledge, and presses it into the other man's hand along with a key. Bless Bogota, he barely even blinks. "It's likely I won't be in the country by Monday. I need someone to feed my cat-"

"Say no more." The man nods, pockets the paper and key, shakes his hand, claps him on the shoulder, winks at him, and then pulls away to retrieve his wife from Martín's emotional embrace. 

"But, like when will I _see_ you again, Martín?" 

Martín's choking back a sob. "I don't know!" 

He steps back from all of _that_ for a short moment, only to approach the band, who have taken the opportunity to pack down their instruments. 

"Now, how much would it cost to get you to play longer?"

The pianist looks up at him, uninterested. "You really-"

"Name your price." 

When he returns to the group, Ágata is freely crying. She pulls him into a hug. 

"I love you, Andrés." Well, she is rather drunk. Her husband clearly gave her a free pass for the night, who currently stands to her side, completely sober, holding their daughter close. 

"Thank you, Ágata. For everything." That earns another sob. 

They wave them off, and it's only a moment longer before Sergio and Raquel are preparing to leave. It must be late. He barely even cares. He hugs them both. He'll send them a postcard from Houston by Tuesday. They need not know anything else before then. 

Soon, they're alone again. He reaches out his hand.

"May I have this dance?" 

He's certain that he'll never get tired of Martín's grin. 

If he thinks about it, it's difficult to comprehend that only a year ago, he was still so prepared to live a non-life, scared of the world, scared of living. He'd resigned himself to a life of nothing, deigning it all behind him at such a ripe age, and for what? He would have missed _this._ He'd been foolish, yes, and he'd indeed been scared, cowardly. Afraid of swimming, and afraid of sinking too. Afraid of success and failure. Afraid of even merely trying. 

Until _him._

Someone who lives colourfully, who lives in full stereo, who exists largely, lavishly, someone with a heart capable of loving even the lowest of the low. Capable of loving him. Somehow, in spite of it all, he loves him. Magic. 

He'd acted in attempts of not being selfish for once, acted to put someone else first. It's possible, that sometimes it's good to be a little selfish too. 

He pulls him closer, listens to the soft keys of the piano playing out (which indeed _did_ cost him a small fortune), tries to figure out how much last-minute transatlantic plane tickets tend to cost, and wonders how he got so lucky. 

Martín tightens his hold on him, hand snaked around his waist. Where it belongs. He beams up at him. 

They'll figure it all out tomorrow. For now, they have tonight. 

He lets Martín take the lead. 


	25. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we made it! Thank you all so much for all of the love you have shown this fic, the whole way through. It has meant so much to me, and made this all the more fun to write! I have truly come to adore writing about these silly swimmers, and I hope you've enjoyed reading about them. 
> 
> This is the epilogue, set two whole years later, from our beloved Martín's POV. 
> 
> It's funny, but writing from Martín's POV makes me want to write a bit of a spinoff. Interested? Lemme know hehee
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy, thank you so much for reading xxxx

"Any plans for the weekend?" 

Martín shrugs in response, all but throwing his water bottle into his rucksack. It's not exactly like he has time to spare right now. His last meeting overran so much more than he'd expected to, and now the entire schedule is off. A disaster. 

Penelope, the very excitable intern which he's convinced has a crush on him (one main reason being that she doesn't even work in his department, or even this floor, for starters) stares down at him, weaving her fingers through her hair. Maybe his accent is exciting for her, his difficulty sometimes (very rarely, actually, thank you very much) articulating himself in English, and so electing to mutter to himself in Spanish to understand his own thoughts. She positively goes weak at the knees whenever he does that. 

"I remember you saying in the break room last week that you were leaving early today because you were going away for the weekend."

"Yes, just to visit family." He stands, sliding his chair underneath his desk and slinging one of the handles of his bag over his shoulder. He really can't be late. That simply will not do. He dreads to think the earful he'd receive if he missed his flight. 

"With your wife...?" It would be laughable, if not quite so awkward, and if her facial expression wasn't quite so serious. 

"No, no, no wife here, not quite, thank you, Penelope. In fact, quite the opposite. I thought I made it quite clear, I'm very, very ga-"

"But what about your ri-"

He's way too late to be dealing with this right now. He grabs his jacket, not caring if it'll be far too hot for it (it will) before stepping out of his office. "Have a good weekend, Penelope. I really must go."

He doesn't even stop by Gerald's desk, on his way out, as that would risk running into Penelope again. He elects instead to leave immediately, all but throwing himself onto the bus. He'll have to get all of the office gossip from Gerald on Monday after all. He is running behind, too, so maybe it's for the best.

He doesn't hate the bus. In fact, he rather does like taking the bus home, especially on a Friday afternoon. The sun beams through the windows, onto his lap, the warmth of the light comforting, if a little bright. 

He watches as they pass through the streets of central Houston, seeing his favourite restaurant, the theatre he often frequents, cafes he intentionally stops the bus off at early sometimes just to get a sickly-sweet coffee concoction. By the time he's home, the coffee has been consumed and the evidence thrown away. 

He looks at his watch. The bus had been surprisingly empty, and now he's _ahead_ of schedule. Amazing. 

Somehow, the bus is called to a stop by his own call, and he magically falls into such a coffee shop and emerges with an iced beverage that would make a child's sweet tooth sob. Funny how those kind of things happen. 

It's only a short walk to home from here anyway. 

Home. 

He'd moved from place to place a bit throughout his life, finding that home wasn't so much of a _place_ , per se. More of a state of mind, actually. He hadn't a home in Argentina, those bridges long burned, but he had a home in Madrid. 

He also had a home here. In Houston. A home not defined by the brick walls of the terraced house he walks up to now, nor defined by the green wooden door he fumbles his keys into, nor marked by the mat that he's been trained to wipe his feet onto. The home isn't made up of the walls he stands in, leans against to pull off his worn trainers. 

He'd had traces of home on the wall by the stairs. Pictures of family. A special thing, that, family. Something he'd failed to understand until he'd had it. Photos of Ibiza and Cinci, playing at zoos, pictures of reunions they'd had since he'd moved over here. His fingers briefly trace the faces of the family he was so fond of at Christmas last year, arms wrapped around each other. Older pictures too, of weddings past. His eye is caught by a photo of Raquel and Sergio's wedding, all of two years ago now. 

He'll see them all soon, he realises with a smile.

He climbs the stairs, ready to retrieve the suitcases, change his clothes and _go._

But something catches his eye.

The door of the study is slightly open. He can hear faint strings of typing keys. 

Odd. 

He pushes the door open. 

And there he is. 

Focused incredibly well on the screen in front of him, fingers busy writing, wearing the reading glasses he's adamant he doesn't need. There he is. 

The blog had gone to international success, because, _of course_ it had. 

"You can come in, Martín," he drawls. His back is to him, but he still knows what the smile on his face must look like. "It's most gauche to just hover by the doorway." 

So, here's the thing.

Andrés's little holiday to Houston after Sergio's wedding had, um, well, it had...lasted a _bit_ longer than the original fortnight that had been intended. The man had been feverish, twisted in bedsheets, excited as he booked tickets to fly back with Martín, determined to spend time together, to figure out the next steps together. They'd found the next step in Houston. He'd absolutely _detested_ Martín's little flat in the centre of the city, and insisted that they immediately look for a new place. They'd found the townhouse, and um, well...never left. Andrés fell in love with Houston, and Martín had fallen in love with him all over again. It hadn't been long before Andrés had moved his stuff overseas, including the cat that he claims he hates (Martín knows better than to believe him- he can't even come close to the bond that he shares with Palermo), and that had been that. 

It's been two years. And what a two years it had been. They'd done it all, travelled, gone to conferences for both of their professions, showed each other off at work events, danced, and danced, and danced. They even made time often to swim together as well, finding it hard to resist. Martín couldn't imagine a world where they wouldn't be together, wouldn't even dare. 

He was happy. And what a glorious thing that was. 

He moves into the room, approaches his desk, wrapping his arm around Andrés shoulders.

"I thought you didn't need reading glasses." 

"They don't work. I just see normally with them on." 

He does his best not to laugh, spinning Andrés's chair to give him the space to lower himself into Andrés's lap. Much better. No need to rush, he lets his fingers lazily trace the heights of his face, until his hands are at his jaw. He tips his chin towards his own and captures his lips. He'll never tire of the feeling of Andrés against him, hands strong as he pulls him closer, closer. 

He remembers. The schedule. Pulling back, so as to not lose the thought again, trying to ignore the pouting face underneath him. "Did you pack your suitcase yet? Our flights are in, like, four hours."

" _Flights?_ Plural? I remember specifically being uninvited." 

"What? What are you even talking about?" 

Andrés is frowning at him, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Ágata's still furious with me."

"For what?"

"For Las Vegas, of course."

Martín throws his head back in laughter. Truly hilarious. "It's just as much your fault as it is mine." He finds his husband's hand, also convinced he'll never tire of seeing the golden band that matches his own on Andrés finger. 

"And yet, she hates me for it. Not you." 

It had been a completely ridiculous plan. Just the two of them in a tacky, pink little chapel (a picture of it, of the two of them he can see, right now, because it sits proudly at Andrés's desk, of course), in matching suits, eloping in Las Vegas. He wouldn't have traded it for the world. 

"Shall we get divorced, then? Plan an absolutely eye-waveringly grand wedding in Madrid just for her benefit?"

"Never," Andrés says against his lips. "Although, I do like the idea of another wedding _night._ " 

"Do you ever think of anything else?" 

Andrés seems to consider it, only if just for a moment, before delivering a very certain, "No."

He laughs against his lips, slides the pesky reading glasses off of his husband's face, and cradles his face. 

"I adore you." 

"That's rather good."

He is _appalled_. 

"Andrés! Say it back. Right now!"

Andrés's grin is wide. As always. He lets him dangle for all of a few seconds before putting him out of his misery. "I love you, Martín."

He lets him kiss him, then, and thinks, yes, this is home. And it will continue to be home even when they are in Madrid, because if he's with him, it's home. It truly had been that easy to find a home. To find it in someone else had been such a joy to experience, a revelation that fills him with happiness each day. 

"Well? Are you going to help me pack _your_ suitcase? I promised we wouldn't miss our flights. Ibiza's birthday party is apparently the event of the year."

Andrés just shrugs. "The child is two. Let me just finish this sentence, I won't let you pick the wrong shoes. Again."

He takes that as enough of an instruction to peel himself away and stand. Just as he is about to leave the room, he treats himself to a look back.

There he is. Sliding his reading glasses back on, returning his fingers to the keyboard.

"Be quick, Andrés!" He calls, backing away. "Or I might be inclined to call Sergio and tell him _not_ to pick us up in the Figaro."

"You _wouldn't."_ He's convinced Andrés still hadn't fully forgiven him for letting Sergio keep that cursed (beloved) car. But it hadn't been practical for them to transport a car across the world that they didn't need. Or at least, that's what he'd told Andrés. He's been arranging the car's transferring to the States since they bought the house. When they fly back to Houston on Monday morning, the car won't be far behind them this time. It scares him. He doesn't really want to compete for his husband's attention with a car, but he's sure he'll manage somehow. 

"Hm...red leather brogues, or...?" He's not even near Andrés's shoe closet (yes, he has an entire closet), but he makes some noise anyway as if he's throwing them around for added flavour. 

He hears the stabbing of keys as Andrés clearly rather desperately tries to finish his post, the finality of a click, and then the quick padding of footsteps as his husband bursts into the room, face thunderous, then only amused. 

"You think you're rather funny, don't you?"

" _Hilarious,_ " Martín beams, pulling out the suitcase he'd already started packing for him last night. It had been no surprise that he'd made no effort to pack. No surprise at all. "Now, come on. I'll only allow you to pack one scarf and two ties."

" _What?_ " 

"We're only there for one full day, Andrés! I'm being very generous here. If you can manage to wear more than that, then I'll certainly be impressed." 

Andrés is suddenly rather close again. Oh no. The _schedule_. "Is that a _challenge_?"

They're only a few (fourteen) minutes behind schedule, as they emerge down the stairs, both of their suitcases in his hands, somehow. Andrés is spouting off about some exciting sporting event they've been invited to next summer, and Martín nods along happily. It makes no difference. He'd follow him anywhere. Call it weakness, call it devotion, he doesn't care. It's theirs. 

He turns off all the lights, says goodbye to the cat (only after Andrés is finished, though, all but crying into Palermo's fur), and carries their suitcases out of the house. The taxi is apparently on its way, but Martín knows better. They'll likely wait for a few more minutes, before deciding to walk further into the centre and hailing one off the street. They've done this routine hundreds of times now. The place seems irrelevant. If they're together, then that's all that matters. 

He shuts the green door he's so fond of behind him. 

"Go on," he says to Andrés, the man standing in front of him, the man he'd do it all again (and again) for. God, he loves him. Sometimes he wonders if it's fair to other people. No one surely experiences love quite like this. "Let's find a taxi." His husband nods, picks up his own suitcase (finally), and looks back at him briefly. Martín just smiles at him, gestures for him to lead the way. 

He lets Andrés take the lead. Always. 


End file.
